Documentary photography is the process of Visual storytelling. Although documentary photography is a recent process, telling a story with the use of pictures has been around for years. There are many examples of this including stain glass windows in churches, tapestries, illustrated manuscripts and biblical stories. When documentary photography came about, it grew a new social process. People began using it as a creative form of educating people about life itself. They aimed to show the everyday lives of ordinary people in an informal way.  Many photographers used documentary photography as a way of bringing about social change by drawing the attention of an audience towards the subject of their work.

Documentary photography has been described as many things including a genre, an art and a tradition. The term ‘Documentary’ was first used by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham  in the early 19th century. However, within the area of visual culture, it was the British film maker John Grierson who first used it to describe a film in 1926.

Lewis Wickes Hine was an American sociologist and Photographer. He used his work as a way of making social reform. His photographers made a massive difference in the changing of child labor laws in the Unites States.

Hermann Wilhelm Brandt, a German-British photographer born 2nd May 1904, was one of the first Documentary Photographers, known as a photojournalist.  He was considered to be one of the most important British Photographers in the 20th century.

Within the area of Documentary Photography, there are many different styles and approaches. There’s a variety of genres and disciplines that contain Documentary Photography, including photojournalism, reportage and street photography. Images that come under the term Documentary Photography are used in a diverse area, from mass media, fine-art and science. However, I believe Documentary Photography is used to investigate particular social morals.

Although Documentary Photography has progressed throughout time,  its power to convey particular information has not changed. However, images have become more open to interpretation.  Documentary photography has become more of a form of art rather then a way of learning. This is mainly because of the changing environment, and landscape that’s surrounding us. There is a growing fascination with celebrities and modern lifestyles, and people have interested in this from of life. They want to capture the life of these people. Contemporary Documentary usually becomes a series of photographs which convey’s a particular narrative. Contemporary photographers reference their own history within their images. Some photographers  include references to art history, cinema and literature.

The images above are examples of Contemporary Documentary. Modern documentary photographers look at many different angles within this concept. They like to be individuals and have their own unique style for their work. Some contemporary photographers focus on the individuals within the photo. Some even create fictional characters to focus on. Other photographers focus more on the landscape within the image.

Tableaux Photography is when a Narrative is portrayed through the use of a single image, compared to a selection of images, similar to Documentary Photography.  The term Tableaux is also known as “staged” or “constructed” photography. Tableaux images also make references to fables, fairy tales, myths and sometimes unreal events. The term Tableaux itself, comes from the form tableaux vivant, which in French means “Living Picture” The term mainly refers to a group of people, poised on a stage wearing dramatic clothing in a theatrically lit atmosphere. The image below is an example of one of the earliest Tableaux photographs take in Paris by a Photographer called Folies Bergères. It was taken in 1920 during the Victorian and Edwardian era. In this period, Tableaux Photography was a from of popular entertainment

Ever since the beginning  of Photography, artists have directed  models to pose in a particular way in front of the camera.  Through the use of props, costumes and lighting, they have created fictitious image. Some of photographers were associated with Pictorialism. Pictorialism is the name given to an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Here are some more recent examples of Tableaux images.

Whose Archive is it Anyway?
Throughout History, individuals and social organisations have shaped and preserved information about their personal activities day to day. Archivists are people who recognize and preserve these documents of significant, lasting value. These records and the places in which they are stored are known as archives. Keen Archivists and historians see archives as records that have naturally accumulated over time. They have been generated as a product of legal, commercial or social activities. Some people define archives as “the secretions of an organism.” Overall, archives consist of records that have been thoroughly selected for permanent preservation based on their cultural, historical or penitentiary value. Unlike books or magazines, for which lots of identical copies exist, archival records are normally unpublished and unique.
Personally, I believe Archives are there to preserve memories, and events of significant importance; however the significant events throughout people lives vary from individual to individual.  For example, something that is exceptionally imperative to one person may not be important to another person. In my perspective, there are two types of archives, and they should be kept distinctively separate. The two types are personal archives compared to public archives. There are many different types of public archives, including Historical societies, Museums, Religious archived and Government archives. Personal Archives are known as Special Collections. These are archives containing materials from individuals and families.

The main public Archive in Jersey is Société Jersiaise. It was formed in 1873. Collecting photographs is a priority throughout the society because they are a significant part of the society’s museum and library. There are plenty of aspects that photography is used in throughout the Jersey Archive’s. These include recording research, as documentary and scientific records and as an independent art form. The images are actively maintained by the society members. The establishment has lasted for over 140 years and has resulted in the collection of a huge photographic archive, with over 80,000 images dating from the mid-1840’s to the present day.

Archives are sometimes referred to as society’s collective memory. They transfer information from era to era, and therefore are sustaining memory from generation to generation. They transfer documentation, education, enrichment, and research to help sustain cultural traditions and values. It is argued that material objects, artifacts, and documents—including those contained in archival collections—play a special role in human communication. Their durability defines them as communicational resources that can be used to transmit information beyond the bounds of interpersonal contact.

Photographs have their place within most archives, public or private, educational or personal, however they have not addressed the question of what roles are assigned to these photographic records in the actual process of forming an archive. Both photograph and film have been prominent in archives ever since the first set of documents were gathered in ancient times. Photographs profoundly changed the way archives are produced and accumulated in our contemporary world – an impact that only more recently was relativized by the appearance of electronic documents. As ways of recording action and information, images contain a resource for expression that distinguishes them from other, verbal-based records found within documents gathered over the centuries. Photos also allow us to gain an understanding of different cultures throughout the world. The use of verbal documents would be very limiting because of the language barrio from county to country; however visual documents allow us to bridge this gap.

Using the book called Archives, Networks and Narratives by David Bate, I got a better understanding of what Archives really are and how they can be used in so many ways.  He also talks about how Archives have expanded since the invention of the internet. Throughout Bate’s book he writes about the British museum, which was established as a state collection in 1753. According to Bate, a man called Roger Fenton was the museum’s first official photographer, who was employed in 1854 to document its artifacts. Fenton uses his photos to create an impression of what it would have been like to see the artifacts in the Victorian era. Bate describes the images of having “a ‘pastness’, which shows the effect a photograph itself can have on how we see the things in it.” This proves that photos aren’t just used to document peoples lives and activities throughout history, but they can also be used to document the objects passed down through generations. This is important because although the artifacts themselves may not last, the images still create an ‘atmospheric space, with a kind of silence around the artifacts.’ 

Looking through archival material would help enrich my personal study because I want to investigate the differences between personal and public archives. An example of archival images that I will be using within my personal study, are images that my great uncle took. He was a very famous local photographer. He took lots of images of Jersey, and traveled around the world taking images as well. I decided to incorporate these images into my personal study because they are images that have been passed down through our family, so they are therefore our personal archive.

Looking at archives has been very interesting because it has helped widen my knowledge about the importance of photographs. I’ve learned that photos are a prominent part of archives, and that they help form links between generation and generation so cultures and important information about people’s lives are not lost. I’ve also learnt that photographs can be a powerful tool, used to bridge the gap between language barrios across countries. From reading David Bate’s book, I learnt that photos are used to document peoples lives, as well as the artifacts that they use. This is important because it allows people to remember important cultural aspects that have been around for centuries.