observations essays on documentary photography

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Observation and Investigation for Documentary Photography

I don’t want to do that, I want to actively TELL the story! I think that goal requires an approach based in investigation .

Within the practice of documentary photography, my agenda is to produce photo essays, long and short form, containing a story or narrative of some kind, something with a beginning, middle, conclusion, resolution, a character arc, an exploration of a place, or of a situation.

Individual photographs work like puzzle pieces for me to join together in a sequence on printed pages, and only a few solo images break away to deserve their own individual printed medium. Observation offers something on the surface level, but it is through active investigation that the best documentary observations may emerge; peeling back the layers until insight is revealed.

Working on these stories requires a process of both research and practice research, which means I take time to learn about the potential for a situation but ultimately will shape the final project around my own experiences once I’ve stepped into the field by means of practice research; in other words learning by doing, seeing, hearing, and in a best-case scenario producing insight based on lived experience as opposed to building on a foundation of pre-judged concepts.

If you spend a long time before working on a story learning with precision exactly what is going to happen, mapping out blueprints for your project before you enter the field, via other people’s accounts, and other people’s research, then your resulting photographs will only serve to illustrate existing ideas. Your project may be a great set of photographs to decorate that secondary research you started out by reading, but it won’t offer much new to the matter at hand. You won’t surprise yourself, and you won’t offer any surprises to someone already familiar with the subject.

This is like basing a holiday on a tourist guide. You hit all the named spots, but those are just places that someone else enjoyed and recommended. You discover nothing new for yourself, even something everyone already knew about – to me this doesn’t seem fulfilling although it may be for some. I’d rather see all of those same sights but stumble upon them myself as a result of exploration than as a result of someone else telling me where to go.

Of course, both methods still have the potential for the unexpected, but one offers a story to return home with that has very little deviation from the guide it was based on, and the other offers a unique journey, with all kinds of little mistakes and deviations, even if the destinations end up identical.

I don’t want to retell someone else’s story. I don’t want to lock into a set of rails and pass by photo opportunities like a safari. To me, photography as a means of practice research works best when it is conducted as primary research. Going out into the world, finding your own problems based on that experience to solve. Studying places, meeting people, asking your own questions based on your own insight and experience, and having images emerge organically from that exploration offers a great chance at those images being surprising, fresh, and a new contribution to that story.

It is very unlikely for two people to have identical experiences in this way, and even if they somehow did their interpretation through the lens would be very distinct.

Allowing for non-rigidity and space to improvise is key even within a mapped out, thoroughly researched, and blueprinted project. If you’re only photographing what you can imagine based on secondary research then you are bound by the limits of your imagination and someone else’s experience. That’s no match for discovery: some of my best photographs show things I could never have imagined and set up and are instead things I observed at the moment.

I will usually start out on a project based on something that has interested me, something I want to explore further and produce a visual record of. I can come up with a set of questions I want to try and answer, but in seeking those answers I will always find development into new directions and more threads to unravel.

If you start off photographing and think you already have all the answers then what is it you actually want to accomplish with the images? You will be blind to the possibilities, the photographs will have no chance of being anything more than the sum of what you already know, and fail to take into account the element of chance that comes from all the things you don’t know.

I think that bringing my curiosity to a situation rather than generating it lends itself to an audience of people wanting resolution to their own curiosity, rather than looking for prompts without real resolution. Ask questions, leave with answers.

I want to satiate my audience’s curiosity vicariously, for them to see through my eyes the way I have interrogated a situation, to see the details I offer as resolution, not to open up questions I never intend to answer. For certain a good photo can pose a question, but a well-sequenced story can also answer that question, and those images can exist together as a complete, fulfilling package.

Of course implementation of any of these ideas will depend on the nature of the story you are telling, the kind of storyteller you are, the kind of audience you’re trying to communicate with, and so many other factors.

If I were to make photographs with the agenda of demonstrating an issue with road infrastructure for the local council then I would take a very different research approach beforehand than if I wanted to document a community’s struggle with austerity measures.

For one of these, going in with knowledge of locations, incidents, and so on will give a very clear blueprint to where I photograph and what, with some leeway for further exploration but mostly that would be a solely geographic journey.

For the other, I would want to be entirely open to locations and situations I could never imagine or discover through secondary research. I would need to go wherever pulling on the threads of that community takes me. Manifestations of social issues in ways I can already think of would result in images that are based on prejudice, having made up my mind before the outset.

In order to accomplish discovery rather than creativity, curiosity must be a driving influence. Open to the world and then directed observations as you explore, but always revisited with that original open mind to see if anything was overlooked, if only for the sake of anyone wanting to pick up from where you decide you’ve finished.

About the author : Simon King is an English photographer and photojournalist, currently working on long-form documentary projects. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can follow his work through his documentary collective, New Exit Group , and on Instagram .

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Observations Essays on Documentary Photography Hardcover – January 1, 1984

• Language English
• Publisher Friends of Photography
• Publication date January 1, 1984
• See all details

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000PRTOEQ
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Friends of Photography (January 1, 1984)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English

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Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Untitled 35)

By: Featherstone, David (ed.) ; Maria Morris Hambourg; Bill Jay; William Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, Anne Wilkes Tucker

Price:   $35.00

Quantity: 1 available

Condition: Near Fine

Book is in excellent condition. Binding is solid and square, covers have sharp corners, exterior shows light shelf wear only, text/interior is clean and free of marking of any kind. Contents include: The photographer as aggressor, Atget, precuror of modern documentary photography, Photographic facts and thirties America, Walker Evans' America: a documentary invention, Helen Levitt's photographs of the forties, Public statemetns/private views: shifting the ground in the 1950's, The photographs of Larry Burrows, Propaganda and persuasion.118 pages.

Title: Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Untitled 35)

Author: Featherstone, David (ed.) ; Maria Morris Hambourg; Bill Jay; William Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, Anne Wilkes Tucker

ISBN Number: 0933286392

ISBN-13: 9780933286399

Location Published: Friends of Photography: 1984

Binding: Trade Paperback

Book Condition: Near Fine

Type: Photograhy

Categories: Photography

Seller ID: 149258

Keywords: 1950's , aggressor , atget , documentary , facts , forties , ground , helen levitt , invention , larry burrows , modern , persuasion , photographer , photographic , photographs , photographs , photography , precuror , private , propaganda , public statemetns , shifting , thirties , views , walker evans america

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Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography

Published by Friends of Photography Bookstore, 1984

ISBN 10: 0933286392 / ISBN 13: 9780933286399

Seller: Books Unplugged , Amherst, NY, U.S.A.

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Used - Softcover Condition: Good

From U.S.A. to United Kingdom

Quantity: 1

Condition: Good. Buy with confidence! Book is in good condition with minor wear to the pages, binding, and minor marks within 0.55.

Seller: GF Books, Inc. , Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: Very Good

Condition: Very Good. Book is in Used-VeryGood condition. Pages and cover are clean and intact. Used items may not include supplementary materials such as CDs or access codes. May show signs of minor shelf wear and contain very limited notes and highlighting. 0.55.

Seller: Book Deals , Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: Fair

Condition: Fair. Acceptable/Fair condition. Book is worn, but the pages are complete, and the text is legible. Has wear to binding and pages, may be ex-library. 0.55.

Featherstone, David - Editor

Published by Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA, 1984

Seller: G.J. Askins Bookseller , New Lebanon, NY, U.S.A.

Association Member: SNEAB

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 120 page softcover, w/illustrations. 9 essays by 9 contributors. A softcover with a dust jacket.- the book in very good condition+, the dust jacket is lightly sunfaded on spine and part of back. Untitled 35 - the 35th of the Friends of Photography publications. A few pages with some yellow highlighting, otherwise tight and clean.

Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography (Untitled 35)

David Featherstone (ed.)

Published by Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA, 1991

Seller: Bookfeathers, LLC , Lewisburg, PA, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: Fine

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Not ex-lib. Softcover in white wraps, in violet card jacket with mint green and pink titles, 8vo. viii + 118pp. + note on publisher. Illustrations, notes on contributors, endnotes with essays. Fine/NF. 1/8" closed nick (internally-taped) to upper edge front panel of jacket. Book and jacket are otherwise as new: clean, tight, square and unmarked with very nicely colored jacket.

Published by Friends of Photography, U.S.A., 1991

Seller: Murphy-Brookfield Books , Iowa City SE, IA, U.S.A.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. clean, unmarked copy. bumped corner.

Featherstone, David

Seller: GoldenDragon , Houston, TX, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: very good

Paperback. Condition: very good. Very Good Copy. Fast Shipment.

Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography; Untitled 35

Featherstone, David (Editor)

Published by The Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA, 1984

Seller: Voyageur Book Shop , Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.

First Edition

Used - Softcover Condition: Near Fine

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. 118pp. Almost no wear. U9.

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Paperback. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience.

Seller: GoldenWavesOfBooks , Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.

Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service.

Published by Brand: Friends of Photography Bookstore, 1984

Seller: Front Cover Books , Denver, CO, U.S.A.

Condition: new.

Seller: Wizard Books , Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.

Paperback. Condition: new. New.

Seller: GoldBooks , Denver, CO, U.S.A.

Paperback. Condition: very good. Very Good Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed.

Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed.

Featherstone, David, et al.

Published by Friends of Photography, 1991

Seller: Schindler-Graf Booksellers , Westlake, OH, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: As New

Soft cover. Condition: As New. Softcover; 120 pages. Publisher's Description: Number 35 of the Friends of Photography's "Untitled series" contains nine recent engaging essays by Beaumont Newhall, Bill Jay, Maria Morris Hambourg, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Alan Trachtenberg, Max Kozloff, William S. Johnson, Mark Johnstone, and Estelle Jussim. Each author writes on a different aspect of documentary, from Atget to Evans to Levitt, as well as the photographer's social image (Bill Jay, "The Photographer as Aggressor"), documentary persuasion, and the humanist document.

Seller: Books of the Smoky Mountains , Del Rio, TN, U.S.A.

Condition: very good. Gently used book with ongoing seller support until you're fully satisfied with your purchase.

FEATHERSTONE, David (editor) Maria Morris Hambourg:

Seller: BBB-Internetbuchantiquariat , Bremen, Germany

Used - Softcover Condition: Sehr gut

From Germany to United Kingdom

gebundene Ausgabe. Condition: Sehr gut. 120 pages Zustand: sehr gut bis neuwertig; UNGELESEN; Preface by editor David Featherstone. Features essays by Maria Morris Hambourg, Bill Jay, William Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, and Anne Wilkes Tucker. Includes several black and white illustrations. A close to near fine copy in wrappers with a light crease to the rear panel in a near fine dust jacket with the same light crease. a7691 9780933286399 Wenn das Buch einen Schutzumschlag hat, ist das ausdr�cklich erw�hnt. Rechnung mit ausgewiesener Mwst. Sprache: Deutsch Gewicht in Gramm: 530.

Featherstone, David ed. and Maria Morris Hambourg, Bill Jay, William Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, Anne Wilkes Tucker

Published by The Friends of Photograph, 1984

Seller: ANARTIST , New York, NY, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover

Softcover with dustjacket, 120 pages; very good condition except white covers have moderate rubbing and stains; owner's stamp on first page; no other internal marks.

Seller: Campbell Bookstore , Austin, TX, U.S.A.

Featherstone, David (editor)

Published by The Friends Of Photography, Carmel, CA, 1984

Seller: KULTURAs books , Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

Softcover. Condition: As New. Perfect binding cardstock softcover, sharp and bright. Book is firm in binding, unread, crisp interior, b&w illustrations. This is the 35th volume in a series put out by the Friends of Photography. A tight, crisp copy. Free of any markings, not ex-library. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 118 pages.

OBSERVATIONS: ESSAYS ON DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

[UNTITLED] Featherstone, David, editor

Published by The Friends of Photography, Carmel, California, 1984

Seller: Andrew Cahan: Bookseller, Ltd., ABAA , Akron, OH, U.S.A.

Association Member: ABAA ILAB

First edition. 8vo., viii, 118 pp., Illustrated from b&w photographs. Printed stiff wrappers, with printed dust jacket that has a crease on the blank rear panel. Near fine. Issued as UNTITLED 35. Contributors: Beaumont Newhall, Bill Jay, Maria Morris Hambourg, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Alan Trachtenberg, Max Kozloff, William S. Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim.

First edition. 8vo., viii, 118 pp., Illustrated from b&w photographs. Printed stiff wrappers, with printed dust jacket. Fine. Issued as UNTITLED 35. Contributors: Beaumont Newhall, Bill Jay, Maria Morris Hambourg, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Alan Trachtenberg, Max Kozloff, William S. Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim.

Featherstone, David (ed.) ; Maria Morris Hambourg; Bill Jay; William Johnson, Mark Johnstone, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, Anne Wilkes Tucker

Published by Friends of Photography, 1984

Seller: Pistil Books Online, IOBA , Seattle, WA, U.S.A.

Association Member: IOBA

Trade Paperback. Condition: Near Fine. Book is in excellent condition. Binding is solid and square, covers have sharp corners, exterior shows light shelf wear only, text/interior is clean and free of marking of any kind. Contents include: The photographer as aggressor, Atget, precuror of modern documentary photography, Photographic facts and thirties America, Walker Evans' America: a documentary invention, Helen Levitt's photographs of the forties, Public statemetns/private views: shifting the ground in the 1950's, The photographs of Larry Burrows, Propaganda and persuasion.118 pages.

10 books -- The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film Making. + Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. + The Autobiographical Documentary in America. + Observations: Essays on Documentary + Collecting Visible Evidence (Volume 6). + Theorizing Documentary. + Ideology and the Image : Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. + The Documentary Idea : A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. + Documentary Expression and Thirties (1930s ) America. + Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video

Rosenthal, Alan + Eric Barnouw + Nichols, Bill. + Renov, Michael [Editor] + (Gaines, Jane. + ed.) Featherstone + Jim Lane. + Grant, B.K.; Sloniowski, J. ; Leach, Jim (Eds.) + Stott, William + Jack Ellis.

Published by various publishers, 1998

Seller: TotalitarianMedia , Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

Soft cover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. 10 books -- The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film Making. Rosenthal, Alan. Published by University of California Press, 1980. 436p. trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text clean/unmarked + Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. Erik Barnouw. Oxford University Press, 1977, 360p. trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text clean/unmarked- + The Autobiographical Documentary in America. Jim Lane. University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. 246p. trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text clean/unmarked, very good condition + Observations: Essays on Documentary, ed. Featherstone, Friends of Photography Bookstore, 1991, 118p, trade pb, covers bumped/scuffed/small tears, text clean, solid binding + Collecting Visible Evidence (Volume 6). Gaines, Jane. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1999. 339p. trade paperback, covers lightly bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text has highlighting in 2 chapters only, rest of text clean/unmarked + Theorizing Documentary. Renov, Michael [Editor] Routledge, 1993. 260p. trade paperback, covers lightly bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text has highlighting 3 chapters only, rest of text clean/unmarked + Ideology and the Image : Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. Nichols, Bill. Indiana University Press, 1981. 334p. Trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text clean/unmarked, date/price stamp front endpaper + The Documentary Idea : A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. Jack Ellis. Prentice Hall, 1989. 310p. trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed/stained, binding tight, text clean+ Documentary Expression and Thirties (1930s ) America. Stott, William, Oxford Univ Press 1986, 361P, trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text has underlinong and highlighting on about 20 pages, rest of text clean/unmarkedcovers bumped/scuffed, CLEAN text, solid binding + Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Grant, B.K. & Sloniowski, J. (Eds.) Wayne State University Press, 1998. 488p. trade paperback, covers bumped/scuffed, binding tight, text clean/unmarked--50.00 for all! Save on shipping!.

Observations. Essays on Documentary Photography

Friends of Photography

Published by The Friends of Photography, 1984

Seller: True North Books , Trinidad, CO, U.S.A.

First Edition Signed

New - Softcover Condition: New

Quantity: 3

Soft cover. Condition: New. 1st Edition. The Friends of Photography, edited by David Featherstone - Octavo. Slight purplish titled stiff wraps with glassine dustjacket. This book comes from one of the essayists, and is packed in the original un-opened cardboard shipping container. It is a pristine copy of this excellent collection of essays concerning documentary photography by Bill Jay, Estelle Jussim, Max Kozloff, Mark Johnstone, Beaumont Newhall, Alan Trachtenberg, Anne Wilkens Tucker, etc. which was issued as "Untitled 35" by The Friends of Photography. A wonderful book. Relatively unknown in this beautiful condition.Seller is one of the essayists, and it can be SIGNED, if desired. Signed by Author(s).

Published by Friends of Photography Bookstore, 1991

Seller: HPB-Emerald , Dallas, TX, U.S.A.

paperback. Condition: Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!.

Featherstone, David [Editor]

Seller: BennettBooksLtd , North Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A.

paperback. Condition: New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title!.

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