R ec o n s i d e r i n g D o c u m e n ta ry A f t e r t h e D u st H a s S e t t l e d

R o bert K night

Social documentary photography reached social commentary through personal (and identity through different forms: the essence A mirror held up to nature is not so important in a dynamic and its height of influence in the first half of the thus largely unaestheticized) work, while of someone conveyed through his or her 20th century, when it was utilized across photojournalists mainly continued to explore belongings, for example, or the environment fast-changing society as the hammer which shapes it. the political spectrum to advocate for social social agendas using a stylized approach driven in which he or she lives or works. The notion of welfare reform, to promote New Deal labor by mainstream media organizations. With what constitutes a portrait and the effectiveness —John Grierson and poverty agendas, and as propaganda this fraught history in mind, In Context: The of traditional portraiture are two important to support government war efforts during Portrait in Contemporary Photographic Practice secondary questions explored in In Context. World Wars I and II. By the culture wars of the explores today’s socially engaged photography. In Context brings together conceptual 1960s and ’70s, the genre had come under Social documentary by definition examines artists whose practices address an siege by both liberals and conservatives as human subjects in their natural environments. underlying sociopolitical agenda, as well as a photographic form that was regarded as Not surprisingly, the works selected for photojournalists and social documentarians either not critical enough or too critical to go this exhibition therefore all engage in a who utilize conceptual strategies to uncensored. The resulting struggle reflected form of portraiture. One of the results of subjectively shape the portraits they create. broader concerns about the role of art in our postmodernism, however, was the expansion This convergence of approaches provides society, the truthfulness of photography, of the definition of portraiture beyond the an interesting moment of parity among and, in particular, the aestheticization notion of visage. Following the Hungarian traditionally divergent practitioners. The that frequently resulted from the inherent anthropologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work presented reflects the realities of a hierarchy of subject, photographer, and observation that “Man is . . . a reflection of diminishing market within mainstream media supporting institution. From the 1960s things with which he interacts,”1 many of outlets for social documentary photography through the 1990s, divergent approaches the images included in In Context do not and the simultaneous rise of a ‘social turn’ developed, with fine artists generally making depict an actual person, but rather represent among conceptual artists.

8 9 The Documentary Tradition

Documentary practice today can trace its Commercial photographers such as origins to the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson Richard Avedon or Annie Leibovitz typically in the 1930s. Incorporating a formal artistic brought an even more problematic approach language grounded not in a “dramatic climax, to their documentary projects. Accustomed but a visual one,”2 Cartier-Bresson’s legendary to the hierarchy inherent in commercial “decisive moment” and his adoption of the photography (model as hired subject), 35 mm handheld camera laid the foundation their work tended to aggressively engage Fig. 3 of both contemporary photojournalism the subject in ways that objectified and Chris de Bode and fine art documentary practice. By aestheticized the subject rather than allowed Detail of Exodus from Libya, 2011 Archival inkjet prints the 1960s and ’70s, traditional social for respectful collaboration. Author Richard Dimensions variable documentary photography had developed Bolton, in a scathing judgment of Avedon’s Courtesy of the artist from Cartier-Bresson into the approaches project “In the American West,” accuses the used by three distinct kinds of image-makers: photographer of “decontextualizing” his Fig. 1 photojournalists, consisting of practitioners subjects, creating meaning solely through Susan Meiselas The past decade has seen dramatic in her exploration of post-revolution Libya, Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick such as Josef Koudelka, Susan Meiselas, their appearance and thus rendering them Cover for The New York Times Magazine, July 30, 1978 changes to such approaches. The Internet photographed a diverse range of Libyan Waterhouse collaborated for three years © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos Gordon Parks, Sebastião Salgado, and “mute.” Bolton describes Avedon’s project as has upended the mainstream media’s citizens one year after Qaddafi’s death and on Ponte City, a project documenting a W. Eugene Smith; commercial photographers, “exploit[ing] members of a lower class for the business model, resulting in fewer news media paired these environmental portraits with formerly high-end residential development such as Richard Avedon, William Klein, edification of his own.”4 outlets with less money available to support interviews about her subjects’ hopes, dreams, in downtown Johannesburg that suffered Annie Leibovitz, and Irving Penn; and fine New Documentarians—a term coined in innovative photojournalism and commercial and fears. De Bode’s project Exodus is also from “white flight” after the end of artists, referred to alternately as “street the 1960s by MoMA curator John Szarkowski assignments.5 At the same time, professional focused on Libya, but was shot during the apartheid and had spiraled into a derelict photographers” and New Documentarians, to describe the new generation of “street photographers have had to find new ways to revolution at the time of a mass emigration slum by the 1990s. While their work is such as Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Robert photographers”—were committed to differentiate themselves from smartphone- of refugees to Tunisia. Rather than taking typically photojournalistic, Subotzky and Frank, Lee Friedlander, Chauncey Hare, conveying a strong personal connection wielding photobloggers who increasingly can traditional journalistic shots, de Bode Waterhouse took a highly conceptual Nicholas Nixon, Bill Owens, and Garry in their work and generally directed their provide media outlets worldwide with low-cost photographed from a distance the road on approach with Ponte City, systematically Winogrand, among others. criticism at broad social issues. Practitioners real-time access to event imagery. which the refugees were traveling, producing photographing every exterior window, Photojournalists such as Meiselas, Parks, such as Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and In Context includes contemporary hundreds of images from the same vantage apartment doorway, and television in the and Salgado tended to focus on creating “photo Garry Winogrand used photographs of the practitioners from several of these subgenres. point over an extended period of time. fifty-four-story building. The resulting essays” that looked at specific populations on urban landscape to critically consider our Photographers Magali Corouge, Chris de Sandwiched together end-to-end and installed work, presented as three towering light behalf of a supporting media publication (e.g., societal attitudes towards poverty, racism, Bode, and Laura El-Tantawy work primarily as as a grid, de Bode’s installation becomes a boxes, serves simultaneously as a portrait Life magazine, Time, Newsweek, the New York war, and the natural environment, while photojournalists, but have found themselves metaphor for the more than fifteen million of hundreds of individual residents and as Fig. 2 Times). As such, their work was often guided by avoiding the specificity, and thus the potential Garry Winogrand making uncommissioned, more conceptually refugees throughout the world, people in a critique of the capitalist system that has Los Angeles, California, 1969 the expectations, demands, and ideologies of for objectification, inherent in other types of driven work about subjects of strong many cases with neither a destination nor a neglected such a large segment of South © The Estate of Garry Winogrand the publications they were working for [Fig. 1].3 documentary photography [Fig. 2]. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco personal interest. Corouge, for example, place to return to [Fig. 3].6 African society.

10 11 Conceptual Art and Documentary Since the 1960s

Beginning in the late 1960s, conceptual and viewers of the problematic aspects of artists such as Martha Rosler and Allan much of traditional documentary practice. In Sekula argued against the aestheticization Context artists Jim Goldberg and Taryn Simon upon which traditional documentary relied, both serve as examples of contemporary eschewed portraiture in their work, and artists whose documentary efforts can be instead embraced strategies that incorporated seen as responding to important theoretical still-lifes, landscapes, and text components essays of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. Both to critique traditional documentary Goldberg’s and Simon’s work incorporates approaches while simultaneously arguing significant text components, which on behalf of a particular social agenda [Fig. contextualize the photographs and create 4]. In her argument for a radical new form of the opportunity for a more multifaceted and documentary photography, In, around, and informed interpretation on the part of the afterthoughts (on documentary photography), viewer. Included in In Context is Goldberg’s first published in 1981, Rosler stated that “the recent piece, Proof, from his decade-long liberal documentary assuages any stirrings of project “Open See,” which looks at migrant conscience in its viewers the way scratching labor and human trafficking in Europe and relieves an itch and simultaneously reassures Africa. Throughout his career, Goldberg has them about their relative wealth and social enabled his subjects to write directly on his position.” 7 In Rosler’s view, documentary photographic prints, changing the nature photography ultimately saves us the trouble of the photograph as documentary record of having to experience something ourselves, through both the content and the penmanship instead letting us witness something from the of the text component, and giving his subjects comfort of our couch, the relative safety of our an active voice in the meaning that is created computer screen. Her seminal essay criticized [Fig. 5]. Similarly, Simon has frequently paired our self-absorbed, consumption-obsessed her images with significant text components, culture and raised a fundamental question: often evidentiary in nature, as in her early how useful are documentary photographs if project, “The Innocents,” in which she took Fig. 4 Fig. 5 there is no follow-up, no way of knowing what photographs of death row inmates exonerated Martha Rosler Jim Goldberg The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, 1974–75 Countess Vivianna de Blauville, happened next in the story? through DNA evidence and presented Suite of 45 gelatin silver prints from the series “Rich and Poor,” c. 1977–82 Rosler’s criticism of documentary and the images with significant background Each framed board: 10 × 22 in. (25.4 × 55.9 cm) 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York similar reproaches by other authors, including information about the subject and the nature David Levi Strauss and Allan Sekula, effected of the crime of which he or she was accused. a greater awareness on the part of artists Included in In Context is Chapter XVIII, from

12 13 Fig. 6 Alec Soth The Arkansas Cajun’s backup bunker, 2007 Framed archival inkjet print mounted to four-ply museum board Fig. 7 Fig. 8 36 × 44 in. (91.4 × 111.8 cm) Sir John Everett Millais Tom Hunter Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York Ophelia, 1851–52 The Way Home, 2000 Oil on canvas Cibachrome print 30 × 44 in. (76.2 × 111.8 cm) 48 × 60 in. (121.9 × 152.4 cm) Simon’s recent project “A Living Man Declared Ulrich Gebert’s Amerika creates a narrative his subjects, developing relationships with © Tate, London Courtesy of the artist and Green On Red Gallery, Dublin Dead and Other Chapters,” which focuses documentation of migrant North African them and presenting them through traditional on genealogical stories through studio orange pickers working in southern Spain. portraits but also through still-life images of portraits of family members, text, and related Presented in three parts, Amerika begins and their possessions and interior views of their his larger, long-term “The Rwanda Project,” overtly historicizing, Hunter’s photographs analysis of the lives of those on the wrong contextual images. ends with photographs in darkness at the domestic spaces [Fig. 6]. utilizes traditional tourist postcards sent to “remind us of the persistence of elegy, of side of that great divide.”9 In Context brings Other conceptual artists included in site of the transaction where capital engages Yet another contemporary approach Jaar’s friends and colleagues in Europe and the idea of transience as survival strategy.”8 together thirteen contemporary practitioners In Context achieve similarly complex and labor. These two sets of photographs surround utilized by conceptual artists and included in the United States to announce to the West In doing so, Hunter’s “Life and Death in who make us think critically about the world multifaceted results in their documentary a group of images in which the migrant In Context is appropriation. Mishka Henner that individual Rwandans that Jaar met are Hackney” elevates his subjects from victims we live in. These photographers, whether projects through different means. Sharon laborers are hard at work, nearly invisible employs Google Street View technology still alive. The postcards serve as a critique of to artistic collaborators and thereby aims to fine artists or photojournalists, have been Lockhart creates an effective critique of the among the branches of the orange trees. In in his project “No Man’s Land” to capture our traditional relationship with sub-Saharan “acknowledge,” rather than sentimentalize, his compelled to speak out and to advocate regimented and compartmentalized nature images from his project “Broken Manual,” images of female prostitutes awaiting African nations as merely safari destinations, subjects [Figs. 7 and 8]. in complex and meaningful ways on behalf of the blue collar worker’s daily routine in Alec Soth presents men who, for myriad customers at roadside locations in Spain and while giving voice to survivors of the genocide. Revisiting the subject of documentary of their subjects. “Why continue to defend her project “Lunch Break,” through casual reasons, have sought to extract themselves Italy. His portraits question the increasing For more than thirty years, Tom Hunter has in 2001, Martha Rosler stated that, “As documentary?” continues Rosler. “The short photographs of laborers during their breaks from mainstream society, relocating off the breach of privacy by surveillance systems in made portraits in the Hackney section of the division widens between rich and poor answer is, because we need it.”10 The artists at the Bath Iron Works in Maine juxtaposed grid, on the fringe of visibility, while living in contemporary society while critiquing the lack London, employing the compositions and in the United States and elsewhere (and have done their part. Now it is up to us, the with detailed “portraits” of their lunch boxes abandoned properties, self-made bunkers, of European regulation governing prostitution. color relationships of old master paintings as art practices are institutionalized and audience, to make sure that their work is seen, and the humble snack shops available on-site. and caves. Soth works collaboratively with Alfredo Jaar’s piece Signs of Life, part of as the basis for his photographs. Without academicized), there is less and less serious and their message heard.

14 15 Notes

1. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Meaning of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1.

2. John Szarkowski, “Introduction,” in The Photographer’s Eye (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 10.

3. Interestingly, as some of these practitioners gained stature in the art world independent of the publications that hired them, they have had more control in making work that is inherently meaningful to them and in forms that may better represent the subjects they are working with. Josef Koudelka’s work with gypsy populations in Eastern Europe and Susan Meiselas’s recent work in Nicaragua and her akaKURDISTAN project both serve as examples of meaningful photojournalistic projects created largely outside the influence of mainstream media institutions.

4. Richard Bolton, “Richard Avedon: In the American East,” in The Contest of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 264.

5. From 2003–2011, newspaper advertising revenues declined more than 50 percent industry wide, while from 1990­–2009, the number of daily American newspapers dropped by 14 percent from 1,611 to 1,387. See Rick Edmonds, Emily Guskin, Tom Rosenstiel, and Amy Mitchell, “Newspapers: By the Numbers,” The State of the News Media 2012, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, accessed November 3, 2013, http:// stateofthemedia.org/2012/newspapers-building-digital-revenues-proves-painfully-slow/ newspapers-by-the-numbers/.

6. “Facts and Figures about Refugees,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, accessed October 28, 2013, http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html.

7. Martha Rosler, “In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography),” in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (London: Routledge, 2007), 306.

8. Geoff Dyer, “Endlands,” in Tom Hunter: The Way Home (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2012), 197.

9. Martha Rosler, “Post-Documentary, Post-Photography?,” in Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975–2001 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 240.

10. Ibid.

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