Sunday 6 January 2013

A response to Harvey Benge's Question "Documentary Photography- is It DEAD?


Harvey Benge on Sunday posted the question Is Documentary Photography DEAD? It's a question I've heard before floating around the blogs and in magazines, not as much as I've heard the question Is film DEAD? but still a fair few times. Thing is this is a far more interesting and important question than the film V digi thing, so I thought I'd have a bit of a think about it.

Myself I've always had an odd relationship to the documentary tradition even though I consider myself as a documentary photographer. I was lucky enough to have studied on a great course back in the late 90's called DOCUMENTARY & FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY, I loved it. It was a small course run at Stockport college for LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNI. Even then on that course we were steering clear of Salgado and giving Richard Billingham big love.  Tim Page was out, Simon Norfolk's more considered and reflective approach to documenting war was in.

 I've used a picture of Ray's a laugh as my example instead of The Ballard of Sexual Dependency as Harvey did. I can at least relate to working class life even if it is so dysfunctional. New York gay clubbing scene may as well be Mars. Richard became a saint on my course and early photographic education. He was authentic. He shot colour badly with crap throw away camera's the camera phones of their day. The photographs he made had a truthfulness that I think has been central to their appeal. They were originally made as records and sketches for paintings. They were not made to sell as a story or book, that came later. The blurriness harsh flash, and sometimes off kilter framing comes from limitations of equipment and technical ability of the photographer not for reasons of current stylistic fashion or saleability. We believed in "Ray's a laugh" as a truthful document and Billingham as a reliable author in part because of his originality and ability as an artist to make sense and order out of this set of chaotic images.

As Harvey says Nan Golding has recently stated regarding The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. "I am terrified that everything I believe about photography, about this work, is over because of the computer and easy manipulation of images it facilitates. This work was always about reality, the hard truth, and there was never any artifice. I have always believed that my photographs capture a moment that is real, without setting anything up...

Now, it is so distressing: no one any longer believes that a photograph is real. Almost every time I give a talk or teach, I ask this question about truth and photography. If all but four or five in an audience of two hundred artistic people don’t believe that photographs are true, then what does that say about the rest of the world? So this eliminates the larger reason for having done this book — not for me, but if nobody believes it as having happened …what is the point? The belief that a photograph can be True has become obsolete."

I think Nan's worrying unduly and doing the viewing public a dis-service. Viewers ain't thick. We are all increasingly image savvy, fuck knows we see enough of them. We believe a set of photographs from the 80's  like "The Ballard of Sexual Dependency" or a set from the early 90's "Ray's a laugh" because they look like authentic and truthful photographs from the period should look, and that's not looking like imitations of things that had gone before. Nan Golding didn't set out to replicate Diane Arbus and Richard Billingham didn't set out to replicate the look of Paul Graham or Martin Parr.
We don't believe photographs anymore not because of computers or manipulation but because of photographers conservatism and desire for commercial and perceived artistic success.

So to answer the original question is Documentary photography DEAD? my answer would be no. Much current work using traditional documentary styles that constantly rehash and repackage should die, in fact it should be taken outside and shot.
 As long as artists use photographs to document the world using original and authentic means and continue to push the definition of what a document can mean and start new and as yet unimagined documentary traditions of their own  we will continue to use forms of photographs to try and make sense and record.

Now that's the most I've wrote here in a long time I'm going to lie down......




10 comments:

Mario Popham said...


Great post and I do agree with you up to a point Mark, but I also think you're being unduly harsh. Most photographers, even the visionaries, owe a debt to tradition. Take Paul Graham; he claims that his style was initially a mash up of Eggleston and Adams. Most people start off derivative and if they're good, they take it somewhere new.

That's the challenge, and I think most people, myself included, recognise that and aren't rehashing old ideas out of cynicism. We're all just trying to get to grips with the language, with the hope of saying something authentic, as Harvey Benge suggests. Under your analysis, mine and your work would be first up against the wall no? After all I think it would be disingenuous of either of us to deny that we owe a debt to the documentary tradition.

Apologies for the rant, this authenticity is a word I agonise over quite a bit so i guess you touched a nerve! Good provocative blogging though, keep it up.

mark page said...

I am being a little harsh and playing devil's advocate I know. But i do seem to see the same thing over and over again and that is in part the fault of arts education magazines and blogs. Not to mention curators and competition judges. When organisations do raise their heads above the parapet and show more left field work they soon get shot at such as in the case of BJP getting critised for showing too much conceptual work or the photographers galley getting harangued for Chris Killip being the only 'proper' photographer on the list for the deutsche börse photography prize. Like all art and I believe documentary photography is an art form it must remain fresh and challenging to maintain any relevance.
Anyway always good to hear from you Mario. I hope you are well and Happy New Year!

Mario Popham said...


And to you Mark! Here's to pushing against a few old walls in the new year.

Harvey's Blog said...

Hey Mark, great that you added you voice to this debate. Of course documentary work isn't dead, although I suspect that some of the punters who are still heaping on the irony and making pictures of "a man standing up against a funny sign", are! I guess too it's about pushing the limits and trying to make work that's fresh. Hard ain't it! And remembering this daunting truth from John Baldessari who said, "why make a picture if somebody has made one just like it already". Cheers...

mark page said...

Could not have put it better that's just about it.

Stan B. said...

The hallowed "traditions" of photojournalism may be dead, but documentary photography will die along with history.

I get Baldessari's quote, it's a valid one, but it's also like saying you shouldn't play a particular sport, or a particular position, or make a particular play. It's all been done. The question is how are you going to add to it, evolve it, revolutionize it, make it yours. If we dismiss it offhand, we'll never know.

mark page said...

Hi Stan, I'm not sure I get the connection to sport. Sport is all about tradition and rules Art at least since modernism is the exact opposite. As you say the thing is to make it yours, rules & tradition should be taught a learnt and then torn up. This always seems to be a given in other fields of art and yet so much in photographer lags behind. Happy New Year mate!

mark page said...

Perhaps it's in photography's genes that it must replicate?

Stan B. said...

ie- I fall asleep watching sports nowadays- unless someone exciting or some team that is beating the odds (in their own, unique way) is playing- otherwise, same ol', same... zzzzzzzzz.

Ray's a laugh was certainly that kinda book! Primitive and innovative at the same time, coming outta nowhere with both guns ablazing! It out Egglestoned, Eggleston- and every documentary photographer ever born all at the same time...

mark page said...

Perhaps it was the fact that Billingham came from a painting background and not via photography that he had such a fresh take on things? He came without all the baggage of photo history. And that photograph of his Mum Liz in that flowery dress doing a jigsaw puzzle what a bloody eye he has!