“Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle both significant and relevant to history and historical events and everyday life.”

There are many similar branches of  documentary photography such as social documentary photography, street photography, celebrity photography and photojournalism, however Documentary photography tends to follow a single topic or story in-depth over time, as opposed to photojournalism’s real-time coverage of breaking news and events. Documentary photography can capture and sustain public attention, and inform people about pressing social and human rights issues.

There are some photos which stand out as having made a difference in the world by showing the truth to people in a shocking way to make them change how they view certain situations.

The most recent and obvious example of this is being the photos of the Syrian Child, Aylan Kurdi, whose body was captured washed up on a Turkish beach. These photos have helped to shock people into seeing how extreme the current migrant crisis is and has made a lot of people realise that more needs to be done to help these people.

Another example being this photo of Marcy Borders which was taken as she was fleeing the World Trade Centre in the 9/11 disaster. This wan’t so much shocking people to realise they needed to do something more about a situation, but shocked them into seeing what it must have been like being in the buildings.