Documentary photography

Photography is first of all a means of recording, and it was put to that use almost as early as it was used for art. Japan’s Nipponica encyclopedia cites Thomas Annan, who photographed the slums of Glasgow between 1868 and 1877 and turned public attention to the slum problem. In 1935 the US Farm Security Administration (FSA) hired photographers including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to document conditions in the South during the Great Depression. Photography that comments on a social issue, or is meant as a campaign, is called social documentary photography. Tate says that until the mid-twentieth century documentary work was an important way to witness world events, while in the same period artists began to treat the camera as a tool for social change; it adds that such work is often subjective and that not every photographer hopes to improve society. A single photograph settles little. As the Heibonsha encyclopedia points out, the way pictures are selected and edited, and the words that go with them, can steer what viewers imagine, so documentary photography is judged partly by how it is handled. Tate also notes that when television and digital technology cut the demand for published photography, the genre turned to galleries and museums and gained a new audience there.

Look at the picture first, then read its caption or wall text, and notice what the words add and how they steer your reading.

• Photography 攝影→Documentary photography is one use of photography, which has its own card.