For this exercise I have to read the article Discussing Documentary by Maartje van den Huevel from Documentary Now! 2005.
Huevel starts the article by posing three questions, is documentary photography trying to renew the way it functions as it moves to display in museum spaces? Can documentary photography still perform its ‘time-time honoured communicative militant eye-witness role’? And has the boundary between documentary and fiction been abolished? Although she poses these questions, van den Huevel does not go on to provide answers to them in the section of text we are asked to study, but rather goes on to discuss the development of documentary photography.
Van den Huevel starts by looking at visual literacy and puts forward her view that the growth of documentary images in art indicates an increase visual literacy of image-makers and viewers. She then goes on to assess the use of imagery by the mass media, something that was initially thought of as typically American but now present in countries around the world, and that current generations are constantly exposed to photographic and film images. As a result our world view is no longer solely determined by our personal experiences but is increasingly formed by what takes place in the media. Artists are responding to this change by no longer trying to create images that depict reality but instead by looking at the way images are dealt with in the media, as visual literacy develops almost exclusively by looking at mass media, visual artists have reflected on the use of images in the media in response to what they see. Documentary images are part of a wider development, namely art is beginning to function increasingly as a mirror to visual culture.
From disussing visual literacy and the impact of the mass media, van den Hueval goes on to look at documentary traditions starting with her own, Dutch, perspective. Van den Hueval states that Dutch documentary image making is influenced by Western, Anglo-Saxon, human interest tradition, but also by from the East by Russian Socialist and Communist, later Soviet, traditions as well as those from Germany. Van den Huevel states that as a result of these traditions documentary acquired a meaning that referred to the function of certain images; that of militant eye-witness.
From looking at the photographic traditions that influence documentary photography in he Netherlands, van den Heuvel gives a brief history of documentary photography, or more specificly social-documenary photography, starting with the work of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine at the beginning of the 20th Centrury. From there she touches on the coining of the term documentary by John Grierson in the 1920s and the work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the US in the 1930s, noting that FSA images were used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in support of his New Deal. The use of documentary images continued after the second world war with the rise of picture magazine such as Life in the US, Picture Post in the UK, Vu in France and Heute and Der Speigel in Germany.
Van den Heuvel also comments on the development of documentary photography in Russia from the beginning of the 20th Century and in Germany in the inter and post war years. Photography was embraced in Russia as a new, pure form of imagery in contrast to painting which was considered to be bourgeois. Workers’ movements in both the early Soviet Union and Germany embraced photography as a way of documenting the Socialist and Communist struggle of the working class. In Germany the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung was created in 1924 and was strongly allied with the Soviet Union. This and other picture magazines such as the Vereunigung Arbeiter-Fotografen which has a Socialist outlook were closed down by Hilter in 1933.
After the war documentary photography reflected the revolutionary atmoshphere of the times, particularly in the 1960s and 70s when the high contrast, coarse grained black and white images were in stark contrast to the colour, techincally perfect, staged images or commercial or advertisng photographers. However, in the 1970s documentary photography lost its authority with the growth in the ownership of television and the increase in the amount of visual imagery in public spaces in the form of advertising. However, this change did not see the demise of documentary photography but instead saw documentary photography being used in new ways, and it started being acquired by museums and galleries which resulted in image-makers focusing on producing work for these settings.
Overall I found this an interesting article, however, it I think it would have been more useful if it had attempted to answer more directly the qutestions posed at the beginning.
Sources
Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung&oldid=971678861 (Accessed 27/12/2020).
Van De Heuvel, M (2005) ‘Mirror of Visual Culture’ in Gierstberg, F. (ed.) (2005) Documentary now! contemporary strategies in photography, film and the visual arts. Rotterdam : New York: NAi Publishers ; available in North, South and Central America through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. pp105-110
Documentary, Fact & Fiction 