Lecture 5 - The Document

- Joseph Nicephore Niepce 1828 ' View from a window at La Gras'
The photo took 8 hours to process



- Frances Frith 1857 'Entrance to the great temple'
This was used to capture one idea of the east by the western eye

The decisive moment

"Photography achieves it's highest distinction - reflecting human condition in a never-to-be-retrieved fraction of a second" - Cartier Bresson


- Henri Cartier Bresson 'Gare saint lazare' 1932
The scene is almost posed. Like the photographer has waited for a moment like this to strike. he refused to manipulate the photograph.

F.S.A photographers 1935-44

- Director: Roy Stryker
- Depression - 11 million unemployed
- Mass migration of farm labourers 'oakies'
- The photograph as both photojournalism and emotive lobbyting tool
- The reality is already pre-recored.


- Dorothes Lange 1936 'Migrant mother'
This photo is very composed. She looks thoughtful in her despare while her child weeps on her shoulder.


-Cesare Lombroso ' Portraits of Italian and German criminals' 1889
He claimed that criminals looked a certain way, that they had small chins or accessively long ones.

Magnum group

- Founded in 1947 by Cartier Bresson and Capa
- Ethos of ducumenting the world and its social problems
- Internationalism and mobility

Ket features of documentary photography

- They offer a humanitarian perspective
- They tend to portray social and political situations
- They purport to be objective to the facts of the situation
- People tend to form the subject matter
- The images tend to be straightforward and unmanipulated