To get some inspiration for my own exhibition, I visited one at the Barbican. An exhibition curated by documentary photographer Martin Parr who selected the work of 23 photographers from abroad (such as Henri Cartier-Bresson) to showcase their interpretation of Britain through their photographs. The images range from the 1930s to now, clearly demonstrating Britain's changing culture. The more recent the pictures, the larger and more colourful they become which suggests that photography became more widely explored as an art form.
EXHIBITION - Documentary Devices
This exhibition examines the tools used by documentary photographers. In many ways documentary photography has dominated the twentieth century's photographic history. It appears obvious that this genre is simply used to present evidence and a document of what occurred. However, documentary photography also shows the most radical side of the camera. With varying subject matter it can act as an index of occurrences from the everyday to harrowing experiences like poverty, war and injustice.
What is a document? What happens when we are shown a supposed 'truth' through another's eyes? What is seen as the truth can be distorted to good or bad ends, so when other devices such as typology, the manipulation of colour or stereotypes are included, the 'truth' of the photographs can either become exaggerated or more clear.
ROOM 1- Colour
The photographers in this room both explore documentary photography but they aim to alter the viewer's interpretation of the work by manipulating the colour of their photographs. Both Mosse and Thompson use Kodak Aerochrome over normal 35mm film which means that theresulting imagery registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light, changing the perception of their images.
Richard Mosse
Born in 1980 in Kilkenny, Ireland
His qualifications include: - A BA in English literature from King's College London in 2001. - a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2005. - a photography MFA fromYale School of Art in 2008.
Mosse is a nominee member of the intenational photography collective Magnum Photos as of June 2015.
He won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2014.
In 2011 he got a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Infra
Deutsche Börse Prize 2014, Richard Mosse, Safe from Harm, 2012
In 2011 the Democratic Republic of Congo held elections for just the second time in its history. The country was finally trying to emerge from years of civil war, and the election was an attempt create a more stable leadership. Mosse chose to embark on a "very difficult" journey when he decided to document the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo as it's the second largest country in Africa and travel is dangerous in areas where rebels operate. Yet this is not his first venture to a war torn environment; he has previously photographed both Iraq and Haiti. Mosse uses Kodak Aerochrome, an antiquated film, to bring new light to the humanitarian struggle faced by the Congolese people. As he was using technology that registers a type of light that is invisible to the human eye, he claims that he "was literally photographing blind" which made it even harder to capture the area. The discontinued military film was created in the 1940's as reconnaissance technology to identify and separate enemy forces that may be camouflaged, so Mosse utilised the striking saturated colours of this film to juxtapose beauty and war with the intention of spreading awareness of the non-televised conflict that still continues to disturb the eastern DRC. This contrast is demonstrated once again between the vibrant colours on the headdress which make the image seem almost ceremonial. "If you make something that's derived from human suffering or war, if you represent that with beauty that creates an ethical problem in the viewer's mind. Then they can be confused and angry and disoriented, and this is great, because you've got them to actually think about the act of perception, and how this imagery is produced and consumed." - Mosse
After receiving an MRes in cultural studies from the London Consortium, Mosse went on to publish his first monograph and book, Infra, in 2011. This series acts as a documentary of both his exploration of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as the violent and oppressive conflict going on in the area. The Civil War (1998-2003) was the result of rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila expelling all Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the Congo to avert a coup and it has been named the 'world's deadliest conflict since World War II'. According to an Amnesty International report many human rights violations have occurred due to economic exploitation such as the torture and murder of thousands of Congolese civilians during military operations to secure mineral-rich lands and the mass killings by foreign forces from Rwanda and Uganda as a means to secure mining zones. Although it ended in 2003, Mosse was able to capture the conflict and the many armed groups that still remain in action in the eastern DRC.
Mosse says "Beauty is one of the mainlines to make people feel something. It's the sharpest tool in the box". This shows that he chose to photograph a skull of someone who was brutally murdered in the conflict against a beautiful, tranquil environment, yet one with colours symbolising blood and death, with the intention of provoking sympathy from the viewer for the other 6 million people killed in the Civil War either as a direct result of the fighting or because of disease and malnutrition.
The Enclave
Mosses series 'The Enclave' features 4 photographs and 5 short films. The films were made in collaboration with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost over a period of 2 years. The films are non-narrative and they overlap so viewers can't singularly watch one without taking in at least some of the others. This presentation mirrors the state of confusion of the east Democratic Republic of Congo being in constant conflict with no foreseeable end.
One film documents the path through an endless refugee camp, giving an insight to the lives of the 1.5 million refugees who remain displaced. In the video young children flee before the camera and an older man cradles an ill child, this serves as an accurate representation of the fact that children account for 47% of the total deaths in the DRC. This is partially due to the forced labour of children as young as 12 in mines. But what is predominantly to blame is the recruitment of child soldiers; in 2011 it was estimated that 30,000 children were still operating with armed groups.
This image shows that children young enough to enjoy Spongebob Squarepants are being conscripted against their will to fight in the conflict which continues to haunt the Congo. The young boy's lighthearted t shirt is juxtaposed with the harshness of the large rifle that he is responsible for.
Ed Thompson
Edward Thompson is a British photographer, artist and lecturer.
He had an apprenticeship with the Russian photographer Sergey Chilikov.
He currently teaches at Universities around the U.K.
His documentary photo-essays have been published in international magazines including National Geographic Magazine, Newsweek Japan, Greenpeace Magazine, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, BBC, CNN and The Sunday Times Magazine.
He has lectured on photography at many institutions such as the V&A Museum, The Photographers Gallery, The Bishopsgate Institute, L.C.C.
The Unseen
The Red Forest (2012)
On the 26th April 1986 the world saw the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident in the city of Pripyat in the Soviet Union. It was caused by an explosion from which the fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. After the disaster, four square kilometres of pine forest near the Nuclear plant turned reddish-brown as a side effect of such high levels of radioactivity and died, earning the name of the "Red Forest".
Upon his visit, Thompson found the forest to no longer be red due to the re-planting of many pine trees in the Chernobyl clear up. This worked as inspiration for his series called 'The Red Forest' as he intended to bring the forest back to its damaged and unique state through the use of infrared film.
The overpowering red of the photograph acts as a symbol of more than one idea. First of all, it symbolises the red of the oppressive Soviet regime which at the time was improving but still continued to battle internal critics of the system who were convicted for Anti-Soviet slander, or passed off as "social parasites". Others were labeled as mentally ill and incarcerated in "psikhushkas", these were mental hospitals used by the Soviet authorities as prisons. The red in this image is also symbolic of the 31 deaths caused by the dreadful Chernobyl disaster. Therefore, this photograph juxtaposes the seemingly cheerful ferris wheel and the tyrannical and depressing connotations of the photogaph.
The City
Studies in Pollution #7 The Thames (2014)
Pollution in the city has spiralled out of control, as of late the government’s new plan says pollution will not fall to legal levels till 2025. As promising as this sounds, it seems to go unnoticed that there are currently 4,000-9,000 deaths a year due to pollution in London, a city which has the worst levels of NO2 in the world (a pollutant that inflames the lungs, stunting their growth and increasing the risk of respiratory diseases such as asthma and lung cancer).
In Thomson's image of central London, the urban skyline seems to disappear as it is engulfed by a cloud of grey smog which should be the horizon. This suggests an increase in the already overpowering levels of pollution that exist in the city which are a consequence of the disregarded human destruction of this planet. The various green spaces across the city have been altered by the infrared film, this is an attempt to highlight the lack of foliage in between huge blocks of man made buildings and raise the question of whether or not city life is sustainable.
"Although the infrared photographs in The Unseen look strangely sensational, they are not constructed or manipulated. This is documentary" says Thompson whose photograph 'Studies in Pollution' aims to document and emphasise the detrimental effect that such high levels of pollution and few green spaces have on the public i.e. the viewer.
The Village
Between Greystones and Rose Court (Pluckley)(2012)
In 2016, Thompson published his first book The Unseen: An Atlas of Infrared Plates under Schilt Publishing. It is comprised of 10 series of photographs from different places. The photographs in the first part of The Unseen were taken in Pluckley, Kent. Pluckley is said to be the most haunted village in England by the Guinness World Records in 1989 and it is home to many local myths such as one with tales of a phantom horse and coach passing through the town.
Thompson recounts a childhood fascination with the spirit world which traces back to his membership of a Ghost Club in his youth. For this series he set out researching ways of documenting Pluckley and discovered articles which claimed that infrared photography could reveal images of ghosts. This is because under normal conditions we see a wavelength of light between 400-700 nanometers which is also the range that most cameras record, while Infrared film can reveal light between 750-1000 nanometers, furthermore allowing the invisible i.e. ghosts to be photographed.
Although he was unable to photograph any spirits, this photograph acts as an homage to the local myth of the horse which is over 1000 years old. Thompson used some of the last 52 dead-stock rolls of Kodak Aerochrome Infrared film in existence to exaggerate the horror of the image by conveying an image of a bleeding horse to the unsuspecting viewer.
ROOM 2- Typology
This room explores typology compiled of images of various people across the globe. All photographers in this room use documentary photography to categorise people based on particular attributes, while Eijkelboom and Mollison in particular intend to explore and bring to light global issues through their use of typology.
Hans Eijkelboom
Born 1949 in Amsterdam
From 2001 – 2003 he was a member of the Visitation committee for Art and Design (HBO council)
In 2007 he published his first book called 'Paris-New York-Shanghai' under the publishing of Aperture Books
Commissioned by the Art Foundation of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre to document the Bijlmer (a district in Amsterdam) in 2008 - This work was published as a book called 'Good Intentions & Modern Housing'
Nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2008
In 2013 ‘Dutch Masters in the 21st century’ short film with director Ramon Gieling under Interakt production.
Paris-New York-Shanghai
Born in Amsterdam, Eijkelboom has always been familiar with cities and busy, crowded city centres. And it was this familiarity that initially sparked his desire to document society's identity in the capitals of the world. Despite the focus on fashion for this particular classification, Eijkelboom took on an "anti-sartorial" approach for this series insofar that he is primarily interested in people and their desire to shape their identity with attributes and in this case, those attributes are clothes and mass trends.
In July 2008, the USA was preparing for it's 56th quadrennial presidential election which was to be held in November. Democratic Party nominee Senator Barack Obama, the only African American candidate, would run against Republican Party nominee Senator John McCain. While Obama won the vote by a 26% margin in New York, there was still a large republican support base in the city who supported McCain, whose campaign slogan was 'Country First' through being patriotic.
This image is complied of 12 photographs taken in the space of an hour.This demonstrates the widespread patriotism in New York in preparation for the election. Although all the subjects are wearing an American flag t shirt, its significance changes with each person. Therefore, this picture also most likely depicts the numerous tourists who intend to embrace the American culture by dressing themselves in its flag, furthermore this acts as a symbol of Eijkelbooms exploration of New York City as a tourist himself as he says "the photo notes are trying to visualise my surroundings”.
People of the 21st Centry
After beginning the shooting for his book 'People of the 21st Century' over 20 years ago, Eijkelboom decided to explore New York City and on his first trip chose to photograph businessmen as that was the first pattern that caught his eye.
However, in order to capture the essence of a true New Yorker without reaction he couldn't simply stop them and ask to take their picture - he needed a candid shot of the gloomy, everyday businessman, so instead he photographed people with his camera hanging on his body with a wire that went into his pocket. He says “that’s the way I make the photos. When you walk in the city and look through the viewfinder, people say, ‘What are you doing? Why this photograph?’ And so on. I don’t have time to talk about what I’m doing, I want to get it done in two hours. And when you make a photo in a normal way, you intervene in the situation: people will react to the camera, and will not be normal.”
This way the subjects have no objection to being photographed which allows Eijkelboom to stick to his short time frame of maximum 2 hours per shoot. And despite the fact he has never asked for permission when photographing the public, he has also never had a complaint - subjects have only contacted him asking for a copy of their picture.
Ari Versluis (& Ellie Uyttenbroek)
Ari Versluis - Born 1961 in Werkendam, The Netherlands
He attended the Willem de Kooning Academy of Fine Arts Rotterdam
Photographer Versluis and profiler Uyttenbroek have worked together on their series 'exactitudes' since 1994 in Rotterdam.
Their first exhibition called 'Exactitudes' was in Kunsthal Rotterdam, lasting 2 months in 1998
Versluis has worked with various magazines and companies such as The Independent Magazine, The Observer Magazine, Vogue, i-D magazine, New York Magazine
The 1st edition of Exactitudes was published in 2002 - there have been 5 editions published since
Exactitudes
Versluis and Uyttenbroek are inspired by a shared interest in the dress codes of various social groups and the street scene of Rotterdam acts as inspiration for their decision to have systematically documented numerous identities together over a period of 21 years.
His work is all about perception i.e. how others perceive us as well as how we perceive ourselves. When we are classified into a certain social group based on our appearance alone by a third party, most of us would be surprised to find out how different people see us from their perspective as opposed to the way we see ourselves.
Versluis aims to encourage viewers of his work to consider the contradiction between individuality and uniformity through the nature of his portraits which are placed together in grid form as one single image. This gives the idea that the models are all part of a shared identity based on the way they choose to present themselves. However, on closer inspection the individuality of each subject is brought to light through many factors such as their expression, their features or simply the way in which their clothing differs within a set trend.
James Mollison
Born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England.
He studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University as well as film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design
In 2009 he won the Royal Photographic Society’s Vic Odden Award, for notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer aged 35 or under.
He has published a number of books including - The Memory of Pablo Escobar (2007) - The Disciples (2008) - Where Children Sleep (2010) - Playground (2015)
Since August 2011 Mollison has been working as a creative editor on Colors Magazine with Patrick Waterhouse.
Where Children Sleep
Nantio, 15, Lisamis, Northern Kenya
After his three year exploration of the world from Senegal to Tokyo, Mollison, born in Kenya in 1973 and raised there until moving to England aged 5, revisited his birthplace of Kenya. Mollison regularly visits his birthplace for projects including this one and Playground (2015) in which included 5 photographs of schools around Kenya such as Valley View School in Nairobi. While this trip was compiled into the series (and later book) 'Where Children Sleep' which won the award for the Best in Book 2010 from The Creative Review Photography Annual, UK.
This series include portraits of young children globally in front of a white background accompanied by a single photo of their bedroom, which is able to convey a great deal to the viewer about their the social and cultural circumstances which contribute to their lifestyle. This photograph shows a child who is very culturally different to most children in the West on account of her extravagant and striking traditional Kenyan attire, as well as this, her 'bedroom' is captured as a self-built communal living space which is beautiful yet seemingly unstable while wearing away. This creates a sense of curiosity of the target audience - a western viewer. It acts as an insightful commentary on poverty, privilege, and human rights around the world.
Such living conditions lead the way to explaining why 95% of children in the North Easter Province of Kenya are born at home, against a national average of 69.5%, as they have limited access to sanitised hospitals. Only 11.8% of infants in this province have an immunisation card, against a national average of 63.7% and nearly a third of all infants are underweight.
Playground
Hull Trinity House Academy, Hull, UK
He Huang Yu Xiang Middle School, Qingyuan, China
As a child some of Mollison's earliest memories were from the school playground. For him it was 'a space of excitement, games, bullying, laughing, tears, teasing, fun, and fear.' So naturally, many years after leaving an environment that held such prominence in his life, it seemed an interesting place to go back and explore.
He began the project in the Britain, revisiting his old school and other schools nearby, eventually becoming fascinated by the diversity of children’s experiences depending on their school. He discovered that some private schools in the UK had virtually no supervision for the children on the playground because they’d been taught from a young age how to play and interact, whereas upon a trip to an inner-city state school in London he was assigned a security guard for his protection. This encouraged him to create the series Playground (2015) in which he documented a mixture of private and state schools around the globe.
Mollison discovered that globally, however rowdy a school was, the children all played in the same fashion. The only exception however was China where the children were "amazingly well-behaved with each other". This is demonstrated by the image above which shows an alarmingly disciplined and organised chinese middle school. The vast number of children are shown conforming to their authorities' rules, performing their daily exercise routine while orderly lined up. Adversely, the photograph of a playground in Hull conveys a very different narrative. The 300 pupils from the academy come mostly from white, working-class backgrounds and on the playground, they are considerably more tough and boisterous. This is shown by the movement in the image as boys are scattered all over the floor as well as the cluster of boys on the right who were giving an innocent blonde boy a wedgie.
Hunger
Mustapha, 49, Grafton Settlement Camp, Sierra Leone When it happened, I wanted them to kill me. Now, I want justice’
Growing up, Mollison had been affected by images from the famine in Ethiopia in the early 80’s, as are most children who first see the disastrous effects of poverty caused by famine. However, since then we, as a generation, seem to have become desensitised to images of poverty- their worlds seem so far away from ours in the western world. In 1998 Mollison moved to Italy to work at Benetton’s creative lab, Fabrica. In 2002 he was commissioned by Benetton to photograph some of the 17 million people who are fed by the World Food Programme (WFP) for a campaign which aimed to overcome "compassion fatigue" by demonstrating that people really do benefit from hunger programmes, showing how the WFP uses food to encourage people to change their lives.
Mollison traveled to Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Cambodia with his mobile studio. The act of removing the standard exotic backdrops of poverty campaigns and replacing them with a well-lit modern studio enabled him to present the victims of famine as people. This creates a greater sense of familiarity between the subjects and the target audience - a western consumer.
The photograph above shows Mustapha, aged 49, who had his arm hacked off by soldiers in Sierra Leone. The shocking sight of his amputated arms and his malnourished body acts as a point of recognition for the western viewer of the awful things that go undiscovered in other parts of the world. However, there is comfort in this image through the campaign which helps ex-soldiers in Sierra Leone, who are given food through the WFP if they renounce their weapons and trained in new jobs.
ROOM 3- Stereotypes
In the final room both Martin Parr and Henri Cartier-Bresson produce images symbolic of issues happening at the time that they were taken. These photographs when grouped together aim to form a stereotype of a specific place or group of people through documenting common ideas or practises in daily life.
Martin Parr
Born in 1952 in Epsom, Surrey
He has had around 40 solo photobooks published
He has featured in around 80 exhibitions worldwide
He studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973
His major projects have been rural communities (1975–82), The Last Resort (1983–85), The Cost of Living (1987–89), Small World(1987–94) and Common Sense (1995–99).
Since 1994, Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos.
In 2008 he received a Doctor of Arts, honorary degree from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), in recognition for his ongoing contribution to photography and to the MMU School of Art.
Common Sense
Benidorm (Common Sense 70)
Over 4 years from 1995-1999, Martin Parr explored Britain and other countries abroad to photograph the 'Common Sense' series which was first exhibited in 1999 simultaneously around the world in 41 galleries across 17 different countries - earning a Guinness World Record. In the original exhibition photographs were printed in A3 on ordinary paper and plastered border to border all over a room. Parr specified that it was unnecessary to display all the photographs in the series when the work is shown, this implies that the selection of images can be arbitrary due to the fact that they all aim to show one thing - global consumerism close up and in lurid colour.
These images reinforce national stereotypes and also make the boundaries of international consumer culture indistinguishable by tightly cropping the photograph. This makes it difficult to guess where they were captured. For example, the immaculately manicured fake nails in this image would once have appeared typically American but Parr's images imply that they are now prevalent around the globe.
Parr's photographs also capture the feel of disposable culture in the western world, they depict the ways in which ordinary people around the world entertain themselves. For example, smoking is a prominent feature in this image which displays a close up of an ageing woman lounging in a deck chair. The saturated colours Parr achieves further emphasise the woman's intention to add to her already bold tan. And while the smoking may seem a typical British trait, in 1990 an estimated 89.9 million (50.1%) U.S. adults had been smokers and the average Spanish adult smoked 8 cigarettes daily, this substantiates Parr's claim of the similarities of global consumer culture.
The Last Resort
New Brighton
Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister in 1975 and has been referred to as 'the woman who made Britain great again'. While, Parr's series 'The Last Resort' (exhibited in 1989) includes photographs of New Brighton, a seaside town located near Liverpool in the wirral, during the supposed prime of the Thatcher period which portray Britain from a more bleak and potentially more realistic angle. This new angle and satire style of documentary photography aims to accurately represent the struggle of the working class during this period. For example, the recession of the 1980's hit the North West of the country, particularly Liverpool hard which caused widespread riots to break out in poorer areas of the city such as the Toxeth, home to the riots of 1981.
Parr uses this particular image to reflect the political situation in Britain at the time. The waitress standing tall as the focus of the image represents Margaret Thatcher. While the children in the background are symbolic of the dissatisfied public and the deterioration of industries in the North. The fact that she is separated from the children by the fence suggests that the Prime Minister had trouble empathising with the public as they had 'separate' ideas about how the country should be run. As well as this, the disorganised nature of the ice cream being served is an implication of the fact that Thatcher was unable to fulfil people's demands to a high standard. 'I will never tire of being by the seaside...it's almost as if it's in a slight time warp and it's got all the contradictions that I like, it's slightly sad and slightly decaying' - Martin Parr
Henri Cartier-Bresson - stereotyping a country
August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004
Born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, France
1927 Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school and the Lhote Academy
1928 - 1929, Cartier-Bresson studied art, literature, and English at the University of Cambridge
His photographs were first exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932
1981 he won the Grand Prix National de la Photographie
1982 he won the Hasselblad Award
In 2003, he created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation with his wife and daughter to preserve and share his legacy.
Children Playing Cowboys with Guns, Rome, Italy (1951)
The foundations of how Cartier-Bresson developed his photographic style and technique are set in his favourite quote which states: “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment” - Cardinal de Retz (b.1613 – d.1679) This served as a basis for his book 'The decisive moment' which includes around 126 photos taken from the east and the west. And his use of a small, lightweight Leica camera allowed him to develop this concept of a "decisive moment" as he was able to carry it everywhere he went.
Bresson captures a 'decisive moment' in this image depicting a game of violence between two young Italian boys. This acts as a stereotype for Italy at the time as it was a nation which had just emerged from both a World War and a Civil War (1943-1945). In the 1950s Italy enjoyed prolonged economic boom, which was accompanied by a dramatic rise in the standard of living of ordinary citizens. The Italian economy experienced an average rate of growth of GDP of 5.8% per year from 1951–63. Yet, the children Cariter-Bresson captured continued to re-live the perils of World War II which had crippled Italy, a country losing the war on every front by 1943. In the West, no other campaign cost more than Italy in terms of lives lost and wounds suffered by infantry forces of both sides.
Cartier-Bresson looked beyond each nation's characteristics nation to seek evidence of a greater identity, a likeness common to people and their landscape. He aimed to record the simple daily ceremonies of living for different people throughout Europe to create one stereotype or identity.
In 1937 the United Kingdom was in a state of social unrest at the time of the scandal of Edward VIII’s marriage to Wallis Simpson and his subsequent abdication in 1936. At the coronation of the new king George VI, the nation was focussed on the monarchy as it attempted to restore its place as head of the country. Cartier-Bresson was sent by the French Communist newspaper 'Ce Soir' to photograph the event in London. In order to truly capture the 'decisive moment', he decided to focus on the crowds and ignored the procession. Many people had waited overnight to see the procession which indicates that the man sleeping outside amongst the old newspapers appears to have overslept whilst the rest of the audience watched attentively. Cartier-Bresson seemingly pokes fun at British peoples 'obsession' with the royal family as members of the crowd crane their necks just to catch a glimpse of the new king.
Children Playing in Ruins, Seville, Spain (1933)
Henri Cartier-Bresson published his book "The Europeans" in 1955, which aimed to act as a documentary of a continent shadowed by the war. The book is comprised of images from the late 1920s through to the early 1970s. Cartier-Bresson travelled across Europe, exploring places from Scandinavia to Spain, in order to capture what it means to be European.
Following the Spanish general elections of November 1933 in which (anti-catholic) Prime Minister Azaña was replaced by Alejandro Lerroux, Spain entered a period called the "two black years". During these years, radicals became more aggressive. Official statistics state that 330 people were assassinated and 1,511 people were wounded in political violence. Those figures also indicate that 160 religious buildings were destroyed, typically by arson.
This reported widespread arson acts as evidence for the cause of the destruction in this photograph which shows unsupervised children playing in ruins. The fact that this was taken before the Spanish Civil War creates the effect of foreshadowing it because the boys are playing at war in the ruins of a war that is yet to happen.
Conclusion
This exhibition examines the tools used by documentary photographers. In many ways documentary photography has dominated the twentieth century's photographic history. It appears obvious that this genre is simply used to present evidence and a document of what occurred. However, documentary photography also shows the most radical side of the camera. With varying subject matter it can act as an index of occurrences from the everyday to harrowing experiences like poverty, war and injustice.
What is a document? What happens when we are shown a supposed 'truth' through another's eyes? What is seen as the truth can be distorted to good or bad ends, so when other devices such as typology, the manipulation of colour or stereotypes are included, the 'truth' of the photographs can either become exaggerated or more clear.
Through this exhibition I have discovered that documentary devices in photography are useful for more than just recording the everyday. They allow for viewers to access and address more pressing issues globally such as poverty, identity, global warming and political affairs. Some photographers in this exhibition have been able to use their work to relay information to the public in order to help a cause. Such as Mollison, who in his 'Hunger' series with Benneton documented the harsh reality of the lives of many people in third world and war torn countries in a campaign to raise money and provide jobs for those suffering.
Bibliography
16th September- http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001866/186617e.pdf 16th September - http://jamesmollison.com/books/playground/ 17th September - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War#1998.E2.80.931999 17th September - http://www.americanphotomag.com/richard-mosses-hypercolor-congo-now-short-film 18th September - http://aperture.org/shop/the-enclave-richard-mosse-books 18th September - http://www.globalissues.org/article/87/the-democratic-republic-of-congo 18th September - http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/Video/Richard-Mosse-making-visible-an-invisible-conflict-140327/default.htm 19th September - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/portfolio-documentary-photographer-ed-thompson-goes-in-search-of-ghosts-in-kent-8899831.html 19th September - https://www.schiltpublishing.com/publishing/authors/edward-thompson/ 20th September - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/23/hans-eijkelboom-street-photography-tribes-people-twenty-first-century 20th September - http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2014/october/02/ten-questions-for-photographer-hans-eijkelboom/ 21st September - http://www.exactitudes.com/index.php?/about/ 23rd September - http://jamesmollison.com/infojamesmollison/ 23rd September - http://jamesmollison.com/books/where-children-sleep/ 26th September - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parr-common-sense-p78371/text-summary 27th September - http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/05/interview-interview-martin-parr.html