Documentary Photography - I

Let me begin with the stating the accepted notion that .... documentary photography is recording of reality, by depicting what a photographer saw and not what he would have liked it to be ... It is like telling a story …"Look what my eyes allowed me to see …”

How far is the argument … “documenting photography are photographs the way our eyes sees them” valid???

Even with "straight" photography [without any pre-or-post processing] there are many ways by which a photo can be manipulate, for example, we choose the type of lens to use, where to focus, the exposure, the composition, the exact moment to click [and we often distort by using long or short shutter speed] ... Different camera, different lenses, different focus-points or different exposures would give very different results ... so a camera hardly captures reality as our eyes sees them ...

This brings me to the related question … “Is it alright to retouch documentary photos using different pre-or-post processing tools”?

Some think – YES!!! Different processing tools often help us in correcting the imperfections of our camera … an overblown/underexposed area or skewed perspective that are common problems with any straight-from-camera photos and these can be easily corrected using various processing tools … which make the photos look closer to the reality … Since a camera is an imperfect instrument in capturing what our eyes sees ... and some post-processing or retouching may be used to enhance the veracity / accuracy / thuthfulness of an image, when done carefully. So a retouched photograph may in fact be depicting reality better than an unprocessed photograph ...

So why are so many people up in arms about the idea that a photograph edited/ processed in a computer is not really a true documentary representation?

The key issue here is that the moment a photograph is tampered with, it's credibility becomes a suspect and it looses authenticity in public eyes ... So journalistic ethics dictate that documentary photographs are not to be doctored in anyway ... which means these photographs are neither to be staged nor post-processed … Since “public confidence” … is the bedrock of documentary photography ... so any manipulation is considered to be a direct violation of ethical standards … and is sacrilegious …

I mulled for quite sometime over why such a huge weightage is given to the fact that documentary photographs should not be doctored ...

When it comes to images like ... the squalid living conditions during The Great Depression … the horrors of World War-II … the brutality of Holocaust ... the destruction from bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki ... the exploitation of child labor ... the Chernobyl disaster ... Bosnia refugee crisis ... genocide in Rwanda ... crisis in Darfur ... or photos of natural disasters like Tsunami, Katrina, and destruction in New Orleans ...

... I trust images that are not doctored in any way ... When I see these images I understand the significance of authentic images ... the credibility that comes with unprocessed images ... and also the importance of saving these images for posterity without tampering them in any way ... Fifty years from now, when the younger generation sees images of the 9/11 disaster … images of people jumping from the WTC … they should not doubt the veracity of this event and ever wonder if these photos were digitally manipulated ... They should have full confidence that these images represet the event as it occured ...

I realize the rationale behind this Code of Ethics [of NPPA] ... "As phojournalists, we have the responsibility to document society and to preserve its history through images” ... and I understand why credibility is the lynchpin of documentary photography ... "The ease with which digital age makes photographs to be altered … makes it even more imperative that the images of society should be preserved without manipulation of any sort " ...

When I see images of walking skeletons due to famine in Sudan, I grasp the seriousness of the situation. I dont want these images to be tampered as I would doubt the true impact of the natural-&-manmade disaster if they were doctored in any way. Here’s one image "Vulture" ... click here ... by Kevin Carter that won him the “Pulitzer Prize” … in 1994 … [But soon after this event he committed suicide at the young age of 33 … ]

I dont want to end this write-up on such a sad note ... so one trivia ... on the power of photography ... It was William H. Jackson's photographs of the Yellowstone area persuaded the U.S. Congress to set that territory aside as a National Park. Yellowstone National Park is the world's first national park ... and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Also let me clarify, I have no problems with processed images ... I am just trying to understand the significance of "Documentary Photography" ... in the history of photography. To add ... I've seen both the movies based on 9/11 tragedy, "United 93" and "WTC" ... however it's the documentary TV serial that has much more impact on me ...