Field trip to the Museum of
Fine Arts to tour the Robert Frank exhibit: Thursday, October 11 at 3:00
p.m. Meet in the foyer of the Law building (the older building). The field
trip is free! You are strongly encouraged to attend; if you can't make
it, please try to visit the exhibit on your own.
Reminders:
Group presentation on documentary
photography collection due October 10 in class.
First essay (brief close reading
assignment) due October 19 at 3 p.m.
Presentation by/discussion
with photographer Ellis
Vener.
Definitions of documentary
photography:
"photographs whose main
purpose is to record a place, person(s) or event."
Ansel Adams: "the type
of photography which interprets the social scene in the way of commentary"
(Pat Brady, "Out of One, Many: Regionalism in FSA Photography," http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug99/brady/intro.html)
Roy Stryker: "the things
to be said in the language of pictures" (Photovoice, http://www.photovoice.com/method/theory.html)
"Documentary photography
combines the use of pictures as record and as evidence; a subgenre
may be distinguished as social documentary. Photojournalism uses pictures
specifically to record events." (PhotoHistory: http://www.spress.de/foto/history/article/documentary.htm)
"The documentary photograph
is equally one of the most intimate forms of photographic practice
and, in turn, one that explicitly associates itself with public space.
It assumes a bond between reader and subject, buoyed up by an assumed
mandate not just to record, but to expose: the 'camera with a conscience'"
(Grahame Clarke, The Photograph 145).
"In his Documentary
Expression in Thirties America, William Stott argues there
are two types of documents. The first, which documents official information,
has little cultural significance beyond an historical and intellectual
level. The second more humanistic form of documentary, however, appeals
to the emotions and hence garners an even greater power. 'A document,
when human,' Stott states, 'is the opposite of the official kind;
it is not objective but thoroughly personal' (7)" (Pat Brady, "Out
of One, Many: Regionalism in FSA Photography," http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug99/brady/intro.html).
Discussion of sample documentary
photographs:
Robert Frank's "Trolley,
"New Orleans" (1955): small,
medium, large
Compared to Margaret Bourke-White,
"At the Time of the Louisvile Flood" (1937): small,
medium,
large.
Consider Pedro Meyer's revision
