Documentary Photography; In the era of visual saturation does Documentary Photography still have a place and does it impart any fundamental changes in society today as it once did in the past?

Photography has always been the visual language of communication and social reform. However, today as we are continuously bombarded with images of war, poverty, child labor, terrorism, natural disasters and often the worst side of human nature. Have our senses been numbed by photographic over-saturation or has it made us more of an activist, empowering or dis-empowering the masses?

In my opinion documentary photography is a style of photography that presents an upfront, candid and sincere depiction of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage as a form of bearing witness. What is our culture without people documenting it, capturing intimate each raw, shocking, tender and heart stopping moment and honoring those events by documenting them for the present and for the future. Photography is a language that we all understand.

The camera represents a way out of our everyday lives, a communication used visually through storytelling, a form of expression that we all understand, without language barriers or the distraction of the written word to inform of us of what is happening.

Photography is a powerful form of self-expression, and today more and more people share their perspective in one frame of something they have seen, observed or experienced. It is shared on an online global platform for a large audience to view, offer their opinion, and occasionally it is used as a rally cry for action. The viewer makes up their own minds from the visual images alone.

Just what makes some images more powerful than other images – beyond composition or lighting blended to create the essence of what is interesting? How will they look ten years from now or fifty years from now? Will they still have an emotional impact as they did at the time of capture and publication. Is there evidence of things that have actually changed because of documentary photo journalism. Is this a continued challenge for every photographer and the hope of the people seeking justice, change and wrongs addressed?

What the public views mostly became divided in to three genres of photography,Social Documentary, War Photography and Conservation Photography.

War Documentary photography began with American Photographer Mathew Brady who in 1845 began to photograph many famous people which he compiled in his book A Gallery of Illustrious Americans (1850).

His collection of images gained him notoriety as he captured Presidents and writers such as William Mc Kinley and Edgar Allen Poe, so when the American Civil war broke out in 1861 he decided to capture and record the conflict. This was a mammoth task to take on and to complete it he hired twenty photographers to cover the extensive war zones.

There was conflict with in the individuals who worked for him as he did not credit them for their work so some left, but he continued the project. The project caused huge financial losses for Brady, his work was not bought by the government and the debts occurred during the project caused Brady to lose his studio and end his life with nothing. He world not get to recognise the gift that he had left future generation in his visual records of the Civil War.

In the 19^th century the advances in technology meant that photography production became more affordable and easier to access thus leading to mass production and the opening of social documenting every day lives. A predominant photographer whose work not only captured, recorded and documented life during that period but lead to the beginning of social changes that followed was Jacob Riis.

Riis worked as a police reporter for the New York Times and produced a series of photographic exposes on the slum living conditions of the poorer class living in lower east side of Manhattan. These lead to him giving lectures and publishing articles documenting the social conditions for lower classes and books such as ‘How the Other Half Lives’ and The Children of the Slums’. He was among the first to envisage the use of photographic images as instruments for social change, this led to photography being used to document health issues, environmental issues, human rights violations, and war documenting, and many more issues.

Photographers like Ansel Adams highlighted not just awareness in conservation photography but the need for it that has proved vital in research in today’s state of global climate changes, with his images used as a measuring tool to the current changes faced by researchers today.

One of the stand out photographers of social changes was American Photographer Walker Evans during the great depression era in rural America. Walker depicted the lives of people along road sides, living in small rooms in towns and cities.

His images, bringing attention from the outside world to the lives of those who less fortunate, he put the empathises on the viewer to make their own judgments as his work entered the public's collective consciousness.

Perhaps the documentation of the atrocities of war through photography has been one of the most potent use of visual recording and storytelling. If you were to ask people about powerful images from certain wars that have stayed with them there are a number that come to mind, no doubt.

The gaunt faces of prisoners in concentration camps, the rows of skeletal corpses lined up for burial after liberation in 1945, and three iconic and influential photographs of the Vietnam war taken by photojournalists

One of these was Malcom Brown who received an anonymous phone call telling him to be at traffic intersection in Sai Gon to witness something important. He captured the photo of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolate in protest to the corrupt regime of Ngo Dhin Diem.

The next was the photograph of a little girl, Kim Phuc, running naked screaming in pain as napalm scorched her wee body. In 1969 photojournalist

Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head. “Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world”. photojournalist Eddie Adams.

Today with the furthering advances in technology that we use in our every day lives, every person with a mobile phone that has a camera that acts as a witness bringing many acts of injustices, terror, mistreatment and environmental issues to list but a few to the for front of the worlds viewing public via the platform of social media.Shock waves rang out around the globe as the image of the lifeless body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi laying face down on the sand of a beach in Turkey. He was one of twelve Syrian refugees who died fleeing war in Syria making the treacherous crossing to Greece, his five-year-old brother also drowned. Within hours of this image going viral it became the top trending picture on Twitter under the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (humanity washed ashore).

However, did seeing this image have any lasting impact on the viewers other than sharing it, writing their anger in short worded comments beneath it. War still rages in Syria, and other conflict areas, people are still fleeing in boats, many survive the journey, but thousands have drowned attempting it or suffered at the hands of traffickers. Sometimes the images broadcast on social media today appear to have little effect on impacting lasting change in our society compared to how they once did.

Being a journalist in a war zone used to ensure a measure of safety. Victims of conflict often viewed correspondents as messengers who could tell the world about their plight; combatants knew the grave repercussions of harming unarmed news crews. No longer. As social media has become the modern-day medium for history’s first draft, the line has blurred between seasoned correspondents and “citizen journalists.” Marie Brenner, Vanity Fair.

One of the worlds highly acclaimed war photographers is Donald 'Don' McCullin. Don served in the national service as a photographic assistant in aerial survey for the Royal Airforce in 1953 but his then his interest intensified when a photography he had taken of a London gang was published in The Observer. This led to an eighteen-year career for The Sunday Times where he travelled to many international conflicts including the famine in Biafra (1967), the Vietnam War (1968-1972), the Troubles in Northern-Ireland (1971), the fall of Phnom Penh (1975) and the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1982).

“I don’t believe you can see what’s beyond the edge unless you put your head over it,” McCullin is quoted at the Tate exhibition of is his work. “I’ve many times been right up to the precipice, not even a foot or an inch away. That’s the only place to be if you’re going to see and show what suffering really means… Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see, is what my life as a war photographer is all about.”

McCullin believes it’s important to fix our gaze on what makes us uncomfortable. “You have to bear witness. You cannot just look away,” he said. And he doesn’t aim to take sides. His images of US marines in Vietnam offer a disturbing record of PTSD at a time before it had been fully recognised, McCullin took several frames of this man and says that the soldier didn’t blink once.

War correspondent Marie Colvin killed in Syria 2012, By Don mcCullin

Bearing witness is at the forefront of documentary photography and a more recent example of this was the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France, on Monday, April 15, 6.50pm local time. images began to appear on social media such as Twitter and Facebook of a fire coming from the cathedral. As crowds began to gather outside the cathedral and began to share their photographs, immediately the worlds media began to follow the breaking news with those images being captured by people with their phones. Within the hour the world watched the unfolding events streamed live through mobile devices.

As the fire raged through this ancient medieval building, people around the globe, collectively and emotionally connected with the Parisians as they gathered to sing hymns and pray in the glow light of the devastating fire. So much was the emotional connections from people that immediately donations began to pour in for its renovations before the fire was extinguished.

Following on from the fire it is reported that the investigators and police believe to have found the starting source of the fire having reviewed numerous video and photos from local residents captured on their phones.

Weither it was professional photojournalists or a by stander the devastation felt by the Parisians was documented in photography and had a direct impact on its viewer and on how the media directly used these images when things unfolded so quickly that the professionals could not be there in time to record it. In the media both print and on television the persons who captured footage that was being shown were credited for it.

In conclusion I feel that there is a difference in this type of documentation and documentary photography and it still has a viable place in today’s world of over-saturated by images. The difference is time, photography is governed by time.

The events of Notre Dame fire were immediate, quick paced rushed through to satisfy the hunger for information on a technological platform, this created a gut reaction for many immediately but for most in the following days another story filled the on-line presence.

Documentary photographers take time with what they are documenting. they become so immersed in the story that people often forget they are even there. This creates a more authentic visual story for viewers and reports alike.

Documentary photography has an emotional quality that cuts through all the facts of journalism and goes straight to somewhere else which effects the viewer on an emotional level. It is about a collective experience not just the moment the shutter closed and opened, sealing a moment in time, not just about today, but it is something that has longevity.