All Blue quotes come from the Bate D. (2009) ‘Documentary and Storytelling‘ in The Key Concepts: Photography. Oxford: Berg.

All Red quotes come from the Bright S. (2005) ‘ Narrative‘ in Art Photography Now. London: Thames & Hudson

Documentary photography can be looked through both an objective and subjective lens. This means it could be used to tell a story through a series of images of people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. It also could aim to show, in an informal way, the everyday lives of ordinary people with some sort of purpose or theme in mind. This sort of photography can document emotion when photographing people ‘doing something like work, play or travelling.’ which could show people in action ‘shown smiling, laughing or looking angry.’ This shows different aspects of a character and also different aspects of their life, photographs recognised that ‘what ordinary people did in their lives mattered’ to others.T his means that the image themselves would be informative and tell a story by itself with ‘only basic, minimal contextual writing to accompany it.’

Juventus fans struggle as the Heysel stadium wall collapses © Eamonn McCabe- 1985 (Recording an event as it is)

Samantha Box- 2006 (Recording ordinary peoples lives- with a meaning or idea in mind)

However, ‘telling a story with pictures is an old device’, stain-glass windows have been around since the 10th century which was a picture is a head of Christ, discovered at the Lorsch Abbey in Germany. Before photography there were paintings and other forms of art, which would inform and also document lives and create ideas.

Documentary photography became popular during the first world war when documentary photography ‘drew on the idea of information as a creative education about actuality, life itself.’ This reinforced the fact that the photographer themselves wanted to record everyday life, while informing the viewers of what was happening around the world, provoking emotion as well as showing the ‘event or social process unfolding in time.’ This could be individual pictures could be put in a sequence, showing the development of the war. Within this time documentary photography was vital for capturing key events, which would later inform the public.

1917 by James Francis Hurley 

However, documentary is not only to record and document but it’s also used to ‘enlighten and creatively ‘educate’, which is seen in the news. It can also show a story through a series of photographs in depth, which can be slightly different to photojournalism, which photograph key events or reality. Documentary photography gives us a deeper understanding and sense of meaning to critical events, public connections, stories of political justices, and human rights issues which are all very relevant to the audience of the photographs. This means that 1 image could have the power to change or make a difference in today’s society. This image informs the public on the tragic event, which is a funeral procession is passing through a narrow street in Gaza, the children died from the Israeli bomb, which struck their apartment building.

2013 by Paul Hansen 

Nineteenth-century photographers, like Matthew Brady, Jacob A. Riis and Lewis Hine in the USA or John Thomson and Henry Mayhew in Britain. These are all examples of forerunners of those interested in a photo-documentary mode. They all ‘aimed to inform, educate and disseminate that truth about a issue by using photography, alongside writing.’  They documented issues such as war, slums, immigrants and child labour and street workers. They wanted to demonstrate that documentary seeing was way of ‘knowing’ and, ‘that knowing would improve humanity.’  This supports the idea of a photograph providing evidence and the camera being its witness, what is meant by that is documentary photography provides verification that something has happened as the camera has captured it.

This is very different to Tableaux Photography as tableaux is a style of photography where people are staged in a constructed environment and a pictorial narrative is conveyed often in a single image, or a series of images that often makes references to fables, fairy tales, myths, unreal and real events from a variety of sources such as paintings, film, theatre, literature and the media. This sort of photography ‘relays on narrative to create photographs.’ This is because Tableaux photography incorporates elements of ‘fantasy, artifice and make believe.’ They will constructs a narrative through staging people in a set-up scene to tell a visual story through the particular environment. Most of the time the photographer would be working with a subject matter, which would spark their idea to conduct a particular photoshoot. 

Narrative photography relies on a vital source ‘cinema’ as well as other vital sources such as ‘paintings, fashion, theatre and literature’ as they all have equally important parts to play in the production of the photoshoot and the idea process. An example of this was a Victorian photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron as she turned ‘popular poems and literature’  into photographs by re-enacting them photographically in elaborate ‘Tableaux Vivants’

The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere (1874) - This was originally a poem

Not knowing what is staged and what is real gives Tableaux images ‘their power’ This is what makes the images so interesting as the view fights wit themselves to understand what the image is actually about and whether it is real or staged. The complex layers built into the photographs show many ‘twists and turns and variations’ that exist in the telling of stories and the deeper the viewer delves into the photograph itself the more they will get out of it.

The main and more significant difference between these two types of photography is that one is staged and creates a story and the other photographs real events and every day life, still holding a theme in mind.