Documentary Photographers Quotes

Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood 'information.' What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being.

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk)

The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best exponents of the art of contemporary photography continue to produce work that fits broadly within the tradition of what Evans termed 'documentary style'.

All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives… The photograph… is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence… which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity… which, because it cannot be “remembered”, must be narrated.

I spent my childhood and youth on the outskirts of the Alps, in a region that was largely spared the immediate effects of the so-called hostilities. At the end of the war I was just one year old, so I can hardly have any impressions of that period of destruction based on personal experience. Yet to this day, when I see photographs or documentary films dating from the war I feel as if I were its child, so to speak, as if those horrors I did not experience cast a shadow over me … I see pictures merging before my mind’s eye—paths through the fields, river meadows, and mountain pastures mingling with images of destruction—and oddly enough, it is the latter, not the now entirely unreal idylls of my early childhood, that make me feel rather as if I were coming home…

At different times I've worked in different mediums. For me, the variation is not an artistic judgment, but a necessary choice. It's just as normal to eat with chopsticks, as it is to eat with forks or hands. Different circumstances call for different tools. I try to express ideas with the most appropriate available materials and forms. Very often the medium comes first, and then my reasons for it. Sometimes, I work with a medium I don't like out of curiosity. It is an experiment to challenge my pre-existing concepts and tastes. I've taken hundreds and thousands of photographs, and it's not because I like the medium. I wanted something to parallel my daily activities, and photography is the most logical way of doing that. I filmed documentaries because the medium reflects real conditions the most completely. I don't think artists should only work with what is handiest and most familiar, because the unfamiliar provides a challenge, and it creates another language. It defines the condition for new possibilities.

The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern it. No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discolored, no matter how lacking in documentary value the image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model.

Imaginary Lives Imaginary Lives is a thought experiment I have adapted from two important career-change thinkers, Julia Cameron and John Williams, which aims to take your ideas a stage closer towards specific job options.55 It’s simple but potentially powerful. • Imagine five parallel universes, in each of which you could have a whole year off to pursue absolutely any career you desired. Now think of five different jobs you might want to try out in each of these universes. Be bold in your thinking, have fun with your ideas and your multiple selves. Your five choices might be food photographer, member of parliament, tai chi instructor, social entrepreneur running a youth education project, and wide-achieving Renaissance generalist. One person I know who did this activity – a documentary film maker who was having doubts about her career – listed massage therapist, sculptor, cellist, screen-play writer, and owner of her own bar on a tiny, old-fashioned Canarian island. Now come back down to earth and look hard at your five choices. Write down what it is about them that attracts you. Then look at them again, and think about this question: • How does each career measure up against the two motivations in the previous activity that you chose to prioritize in the future? If you decided, for instance, that you want a combination of making a difference and high status, check whether your five imaginary careers might provide them. The point is to help you think more deeply about exactly what you are looking for in a career, the kind of experiences that you truly desire.

I haven’t been disingenuous in what I’ve said describing my perception of “truth” and “reality.” Certainly, I understand what is generally meant to be the “truth,” I understand this notion, but it’s not something I trust in, OK? The only answer that feels true (I said feels, not is) is that yes, the character Minnie is me, but she is not me. She is a projection of some tumult which originates within me, but she is not me. I use elements of myself, including my likeness, for the character, perhaps as Cindy Sherman uses herself in her work, but like Sherman’s photographs, the work itself is not any more about the creator than it is about everyone. I won’t deny that Minnie does things I have done, and that things happen to her that have happened to me, but she, unlike me, having been created, is who she is and will remain so, unchanged now. I make no attempt to create “documentary.” There is a process of dissociation that takes place when I make a story, I make creative decisions in a fugue state that I could hardly describe to you, but the end result is, I hope, a story with some meaning or resonance, something created, with a beginning, a middle and an end, an encapsulation of feeling and impression, but in no way a documentary of anything other than an “emotional truth.” If I told most interviewers that my work is “true” and that it is based on real events that occurred in my life, they would more readily accept this than they do the explanation I try to give. Sadly, what they would believe feels to me like a lie and a simplification of a process that is for me as complex and vague as life itself…

Yoel Goldenberg makes exhibitions, photographs, models and media craftsmanship. His works are an examination of ideas, for example, validness and objectivity by utilizing an exhaustive methodology and semi exploratory exactness and by referencing documentaries, 'actuality fiction' and prominent experimental reciprocals. Yoel Goldenberg as of now lives and works in Brooklyn. By challenging the division between the domain of memory and the domain of experience, Goldenberg formalizes the circumstantial and underlines the procedure of synthesis that is behind the apparently arbitrary works. The manners of thinking, which are probably private, profoundly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream universes, are much of the time uncovered as collections. His practice gives a valuable arrangement of metaphorical instruments for moving with a pseudo-moderate approach in the realm of execution: these fastidiously arranged works reverberate and resound with pictures winnowed from the fantastical domain of creative energy. By trying different things with aleatoric procedures, Yoel Goldenberg makes work in which an interest with the clarity of substance and an uncompromising demeanor towards calculated and insignificant workmanship can be found. The work is detached and deliberate and a cool and unbiased symbolism is utilized. His works are highlighting unplanned, unintentional and sudden associations which make it conceivable to overhaul craftsmanship history and, far and away superior, to supplement it. Consolidating random viewpoints lead to astounding analogies. With a theoretical methodology, he ponders the firmly related subjects of file and memory. This regularly brings about an examination of both the human requirement for "definitive" stories and the inquiry whether tales "fictionalize" history. His gathered, changed and own exhibitions are being faced as stylishly versatile, specifically interrelated material for memory and projection. The conceivable appears to be genuine and reality exists, yet it has numerous countenances, as Hanna Arendt refers to from Franz Kafka. By exploring dialect on a meta-level, he tries to approach a wide size of subjects in a multi-layered route, likes to include the viewer in a way that is here and there physical and has faith in the thought of capacity taking after structure in a work. Goldenberg’s works are straightforwardly a reaction to the encompassing environment and uses regular encounters from the craftsman as a beginning stage. Regularly these are confined occasions that would go unnoticed in their unique connection. By utilizing a regularly developing file of discovered archives to make self-ruling works of art, he retains the convention of recognition workmanship into every day hone. This individual subsequent and recovery of a past custom is vital as a demonstration of reflection. Yoel’s works concentrate on the powerlessness of correspondence which is utilized to picture reality, the endeavor of dialog, the disharmony in the middle of structure and content and the dysfunctions of dialect. To put it plainly, the absence of clear references is key components in the work. With an unobtrusive moderate methodology, he tries to handle dialect. Changed into craftsmanship, dialect turns into an adornment. Right then and there, loads of ambiguities and indistinctnesses, which are intrinsic to the sensation, rise up to the top

We can take all the photographs of Al Jamadi that night in the shower room, including the two trips to the shower room that Sabrina made, one with Chip Frederick, one with Chuck Graner, and we can order the photographs within a fraction of a second. It’s

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There is, for instance, the case of a retired art professor named David Mandell in the London suburb of Sudbury Hill. A 2003 British TV documentary profiled Mandell and his astonishing record of seemingly precognitive dreams, which he depicts the next morning in drawings or watercolors and then photographs under the calendar clock at his local bank to provide a time stamp and forestall accusations of fakery or faulty memory.

Historians of images also explained that photographs do not necessarily tell greater truths than sketches or paintings. Precisely because they seem to provide incontrovertible proof, photographs can actually distort reality more effectively than either documentary art or the written word.

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.

Documentary photography is one of the prominent and influential branches in the art of photography that records social, cultural, and even historical realities. This type of photography allows the photographer to depict real and sometimes untold stories of everyday life and people. In this type of photography, the main goal is to convey the sense of realness and authenticity of the scenes. In this article, we will review important tips and principles for documentary photography with a camera and explain how to record facts in an attractive and effective way. Choosing the right equipment Choosing the right equipment Choosing the right equipment for documentary photography is very important, because you often need to act quickly and accurately. Using DSLR cameras and mirrorless cameras are the best options for this type of photography. Camera feature advantages High flexibility DSLR, excellent image quality, various lenses Mirrorless light and compact, more speed, silence Recommended lenses: 50mm prime lens: for portraits and close-ups. 24mm wide lens: for shooting wide landscapes and scenes. The importance of light in documentary photography Natural light is one of the main factors in documentary photography. You can't always control the lighting conditions, but learning to use ambient light, especially in public or outdoor settings, can help you create better images. Important points in using light: Natural light: during the golden hours (early morning and evening) is the best time to take documentary photos. This light is soft and pleasant. Shadow Light: If the direct sunlight is strong, try shooting in the shadows to avoid harsh shadows on your subjects. Composition techniques in documentary photography Composition is one of the key principles in documentary photography, with the help of which you can tell a telling and interesting story. The rule of thirds is one of the best and most common compositional rules used by documentary photographers. Rule of thirds: Divide the image frame into three horizontal parts and three vertical parts. Place the important subjects of the photo at the intersection points of these lines. Also, pay attention to the depth of the scene and try to use the foreground and background properly to make your image more dynamic. Taking meaningful photos One of the important principles in documentary photography is the meaningfulness of the images. Each photo should tell a story or capture a special moment. In order for your images to be real and emotional, it is better to interact with your subjects and capture them in their natural state. Don't be afraid to record unexpected and normal moments; Because these moments can better reflect the reality of everyday life. Recording feelings and emotions: Documentary photography should be able to show feelings and emotions well. Pay attention to small details in faces, gestures and looks. These details can add depth to your images. Choose the right angle The right angle of view can make a big difference in the impact of your documentary photo. Try different angles to find the best way to tell your story. Low Angle: To show the power or glory of a subject. High Angle: To show the smallness or loneliness of the subject. Normal angle (Eye Level): to create a closer and more realistic connection with the viewer. Camera settings for documentary photography Camera settings for documentary photography Camera settings are very important for documentary photography, as you may be shooting in different light conditions and at high speed. In the following, we mention some key camera settings for documentary photography. shutter speed For documentary photography, where there is a lot of movement in the scene, the shutter speed is very important. If you are shooting moving scenes, the shutter speed should be faster than 1/250 second to avoid blurring. resource : nivamag.ir

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her. She set off at once, a tall figure clad in a pair of blue denim jeans, a dark-blue suede jacket, and a soft scarf wrapped loosely around her face to protect her from the chilling, easterly spring wind. I stood and watched as she slowly dwindled in the distance, her head held high, alone apart from busy oyster catchers that followed her along the water’s edge. It was a strange sensation watching her walking away by herself, with no bodyguards following at a discreet distance. What were my responsibilities here? I kept thinking. Yet I knew this area well, and not once did I feel uneasy. I had made this decision--not one of my colleagues knew. Senior officers at Scotland Yard would most certainly have boycotted the idea had I been foolish enough to give them advance notice of what the Princess and I were up to.

When we are reading, a voice comes to us as in the dark and whispers, "Imagine!" Samuel Beckett as told by Bill Moyer in the Foreword he wrote for, The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. Afterword by Ann Patchett

The purpose of art is not to create a literal, documentary-style reproduction of a scene from real life. “The artist must open our eyes to what unaided we could not see, and in order to do so he often needs to modify the familiar appearance of things and so make something which is, in the photographic sense, a bad likeness.” The greatest artists teach us how to perceive through the use of expression and decoration. They are scientists, manipulating color, line, light, space, and mass in ways that reveal human nature. “The artist gives us satisfaction by seeing far more clearly than we could see for ourselves.” A great painting should be more than a sum of technical beauty. At the Barnes, we were taught to look for delicacy, subtlety, power, surprise, grace, firmness, complexity, and drama—but to do so with a scientist’s eye.

The individual most responsible for the triumph of the documentary style was probably Roy Stryker of the government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA), who sent a platoon of famous photographers out to record the lives of impoverished farmers and thus “introduce America to Americans.” Stryker was the son of a Kansas Populist, and, according to a recent study of his work, “agrarian populism” was the “first basic assumption” of the distinctive FSA style. Other agencies pursued the same aesthetic goal from different directions. Federal workers transcribed folklore, interviewed surviving ex-slaves, and recorded the music of the common man. Federally employed artists painted murals illustrating local legends and the daily work of ordinary people on the walls of public buildings. Unknowns contributed to this work, and great artists did too—Thomas Hart Benton, for example, painted a mural that was actually titled A Social History of the State of Missouri in the capitol building in Jefferson City.16 There was a mania for documentary books, photos of ordinary people in their homes and workplaces that were collected and narrated by some renowned prose stylist. James Agee wrote the most enduring of these, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in cooperation with photographer Walker Evans, but there were many others. The novelist Erskine Caldwell and the photographer Margaret Bourke-White published You Have Seen Their Faces in 1937, while Richard Wright, fresh from the success of his novel Native Son, published Twelve Million Black Voices in 1941, with depictions of African American life chosen from the populist photographic output of the FSA.

The creation of this digital collection, which brings together the entire body of research materials related to William F Cody's personal and professional life, will enable a variety of audiences to consider the impact of William F. Cody the cultural entrepreneur on American life and provide contextualizing documents from other sources, including audio-visual media that exist for the final years of his life. It will allow more scholars to study the man within his times, will provide new resources to contextualize studies of other regional and national events and persons, and will encourage digital edition visitors to explore and learn more about these vital decades of American expansion and development. The digital edition of the Papers will differ significantly from the print edition by including manuscript materials, photographs, and film and sound recordings, and it will offer navigational and search options not possible in the print edition. As Griffin's volume reveals, it took many people to make Buffalo Bill's Wild West happen. Likewise, there are many people whose combined efforts have made this documentary project a reality. All of the generous donors and talented scholars who have contributed to the success of this effort will be noted in due course. But in this, the first publication, it is appropriate to acknowledge that big ideas are carried to fruition only by sound and steady leadership. The McCracken Research Library was fortunate at the advent of the papers project that in its board chair it had such a leader. Maggie Scarlett was not only an early supporter of this documentary editing project but also its first true champion. It was through her connections (and tenacity) that the initial funds were raised to launch the project. Whether seeking support from private donors, the Wyoming State Legislature, federal granting agencies, or the United States Congress, Maggie led the charge and thereby secured the future of this worthy endeavor. Thus, this reissue of Griffin's account is a legacy not only to William Cody but also to all of those who have made this effort and the larger undertaking possible. In that spirit, though these pages rightfully belong to Charles Eldridge Griffin and to Mr. Dixon, if this volume were mine to dedicate, it would be to Maggie. Kurt Graham