OUGD401 - Lecture Notes: Photography

William Edward Kilburn 'The Great Chartist Meeting At The Common' 1848

• Camera used in a documentary way
• Early trade union movement
• People here are protesting about the conditions in the Victorian era
• Recording an important historical event
• Recording a type of people power
• Photographer is an invisible observer in this image
• He is standing at the back of the crowd
• He is therefore not acknowledged by the people
• He is a third wall
• Objectively recording

Grahame Clarke

• In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of 'history' is a limited illusion. It ignores the entire cultural and social background against which the image was taken, just as it renders the photographer neutral, passive and invisible...

"How The Other Half Live" Jacob Riis, 1890

• His purpose is essentially a push for social reform
• He is a wealthy, fairly educated, middle class man
• Access to the technology that the people who he is photographing don't have access to
• Setting up a large plate camera in the street which is essentially their home
• The presence of the people on the street is more to do with the interest of what is going on
• These people were caught in this 'hanging out' pose but at the same time reacting to his presence

A Growler Gang in Session, 1887

• Riis is trying to expose this idea that working class people would have a tendency to crime
• He is implying that he is robbish a lush
• He got the children to reenact the situation that we see here
• It is purely constructed and gave them cigarettes as a reward

Lewis Hine, Russian steel workers, Homestead, Pa, 1908

• Photographing Russian steel workers
• There is a respect given to them as people and they are not just immigrants representing a larger group
• There is a relation between us and the subject

Duffer boy, 1909

• Hine never exploits the people he is photographing
• He doesn't attempt to shock them he really reports the conditions

F.S.A (Farm Security Administration)

• Creating as part of the new deal

Margaret Bourke-White 'Sharecroppers Home' 1937

• The images are not seen as subjective in any way they are trusted to be objective
• Photogtaphing a young man in a sharecroppers home
• Shack is constructed and lined with newspaper and magazine cuttings
• Practical use of materials
• She is contrasting the wealthier world with the young boy
• The newspapers represent the American Dream

Russel Lee 'Interior Of A Black Farmers House' 1939

• There is a less artistic use of composition
• There is no human presence in the image
• Magazines and newspapers on the wall

Dorothea Lange 'Migrant Mother' 1936

• Famous image of huge debate
• 'I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother...'
• Speaking in retrospect about her work
• In doing so she describes her treatment of the woman almost like an object
• There is a situation where the image becomes everything

Walker Evans 'Graveyard, Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem'

Bill Brandt 'Northumberland Mier at His Evening Meal' 1937

• He is making significant all of the images in the photograph
• There is nothing neutral about the inclusion of the objects
• Making of ordinary lives into a museum culture
• Something to look at and be thankful that it is not our way of living
• A construction of the working class

Magnum Group

• Founded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson and Capa
• Small portable camera which has been used without being noticed
• This allows the street photographer or the reporter to make documents unseen

Henri Cartier, Bresson

• Reflection in the water and a shadow in the background
• Almost sees the world like a kind of stage
• He is there waiting for all of the moments in the story for him to strike and capture that moment

Documentary in war

• Robert Capa 'The Falling Soldier' 1936
• Image that is much discussed as it was originally recognised as the moment of the soldiers death captured on film
• It has since been disputed

George Rodger 'Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp' 1945

• The way that he has photographed the bodies retains a respectful distance from the subject
• He could have easily done close up shots of the bodies but hasn't done

Hung Cong Ut 1972

• Anti war statement
• Expresses the real effects of the accident
• When an image like this becomes as iconic as it is it kind of transforms it and we end up discussing it in a way that is about the relation of the photographer to the subject
• Is the photographers role to intervene?

Robert Haeberle 'People About to be Shot' 1969

• The photographer is witness to the people about to be shot
• He shouts 'hold it' before the actual shooting occurs
• So that effectively the photographer shoots first
• The picture and the desire to gather the information overrides any human response to the work
• This is where documentary starts to exhaust itself

Don McCullin 'Shell Shocked Soldier' 1968

• We are seeing his own trauma
• He is so traumatised himself by the experience that he retreats to idealised landscapes
• As we get documentary switching we are almost exhausted
• Perhaps we are experiencing the point where we get to a lack of sympathy or identification because we are overexposed to the horror