Miranda Gavin on documentary photograph

Exercise 1 - listen to Miranda Gavin (editor of HOTshoe Magazine) talking about documentary photography and write a 200 word reflective commentary setting out your reactions to Gavin's viewpoints.

My first reaction was surprise that there were so many categories, and subcategories, into which photography was divided. Picking out the salient divisions mentioned by Gavin, namely: photojournalism, documentary and reportage - I had to go away and actually think about what each word/area/division meant (if anything) to me.

 After a quick brainstorm, I came up with the following definitions:

Photojournalism: -

Ø         Immediate - get in, get the image, get out...

Ø         Focused on or specific to a particular event, or part thereof

Ø         Often sensationalised, biased and superficial

Ø         Potentially (frequently) untrue

Ø         Designed to sell a story as dictated by the editor.

Documentary: -

Ø         Extended, possibly ongoing, time frame - days, weeks, months...

Ø         More rounded (holistic) in the information presented about the event - including background and credible references

Ø         Creation of a balanced view (all sides and angles) of the event

Ø         An accurate account of the situation

Ø         Designed to tell the story using the voice of the people involved.

Reportage: -

Sits somewhere in between the first two - a bit more time and a bit more depth; less sensationalism and less bias; a little bit less the voice of the media and a little bit more the voice of the subjects...

Subsequent to some trawling of the web and discussions with 'colleagues' it would appear, that whilst I have a somewhat negative view of journalists, my basic definitions are correct.

So back to my reaction to Gavin's viewpoint:

I find it interesting, but unsurprising, that these 'historic' labels are becoming inadequate to describe the work currently being created by a new generation of artists. What I did find very surprising, was that emerging artists were choosing a label and thus pigeonhole themselves with these terms. Especially so because technology advances and photography as a digital medium, will and must continue to change, develop and adapt. We are already saturated with images of varying degrees of quality covering every conceivable topic; as a result photographers will have to modify their existing practises and style to stand out in this crowd.

As Gavin states in the interview, "these topics have been covered before, so people are having to look at new ways to show them" and the resultant images created overlap the boundaries of these definitions because "they are too rigid to reflect what's actually happening". The only way to describe it "is art merging into documentary merging into creative" and as such "we are having to renegotiate and having to probe these terms - consciously or subconsciously".

Extremely interesting was Gavin's concern re: the impact on the relationships between the photograph and the audience, as a result of the development of this new digital platform. Initially, how do you maintain the quality control of the image - viewed on countless uncalibrated monitors? Then subsequently, how do you ensure the correct distribution?