Both contemporary aspects of photography; documentary and tableaux, are paramount for encapsulating a specific scene which conveys a particular time frame in history. Although, the two photographic techniques maintain a common purpose, the method behind using one is a completely different prospect.

Documentary photography is a recording technique utilized in order to understand and reflect upon either previous or current times, whether this be in either the social or political spheres, or perhaps the combination of the two. Documentary photography attempts to reveal the true, (or as close to true), events that have occurred that could serve as “both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life”. The value of documentation is unquestionable as it allows us to understand a fragment of history, whether it be good or bad, and much like the role of a historian, it can warn us over what manoeuvres to make or not take, like an adviser. Documentation can also be clinical in the process of creativity as understanding previous ideas and concepts can influence into creating our own which needs planning and documentation of our own ideas. According to https://www.fastspot.com/publications/why-documentation-is-important/, “Documents can be exciting, inspiring, and creative forms of expression … (and) can be ‘living’ data”. The means of documentation via photography is a concept which keeps key information alive through visual representation, adding another dimension to documentary, which is a crucial factor in understanding the past.

Power house mechanic working on steam pump (1920) by Lewis Hine

Unfortunately, due to the photographic documentation work of misleading photographers like Steve McCurry, we must test whether the photographs we view are authentic and are actual representations of events and environments.

https://petapixel.com/2016/05/06/botched-steve-mccurry-print-leads-photoshop-scandal/

RESUME – READ AND WRITE P2

Documentary photography is when a photographer captures a movement that is happening at that time without any staging of interference from the photographer themselves. Documentary photography can be seen throughout history as it was initially invented to record, it was never created with the intent of becoming a creative format. However, this has changed throughout the years with photography actually become a creative subject often taught in schools and programs designed to manipulate photographs such as the well known program called Photoshop. Photography is no longer just about recording the world, it is also about manipulating it.

However early 20th century after the First World War documentary photography was thriving. The point to documentary photography wasn’t just to record an event, it was also to enlighten and teach in a creative way. Documentary photography was all about showing what everyday life was like for different people and showing that in motion, showing them smiling, frowning, angry, happy or sad. It was all about giving people the ability to notice things they weren’t used to seeing.  This sometimes shown in a certain order to convey a message. They may have put each photo in chronological order to show an event unravel or place to place them in a certain sequence to convey a meaning such as loneliness.

http://time.com/3449718/mystery-in-the-sky-a-legendary-photo-slowly-gives-up-its-secrets/

Just this photo in itself shows how important documentary photography is as its showing how the work men of the Rockefeller building would sit on the beams and have their lunch. This photo looks very artistic and staged or even edited however it’s not as the work men would do this almost every lunchtime and has been recorded and well documented. This is one of Rockefeller’s biggest part of their marketing campaign. Now they invite you to recreate this photo using a green screen when visiting the tower. This iconic photo has become something Rockefeller prides themselves off even through this would not be allowed now days, although this is probably why it was so interesting that these men had less care for their own lives than most people. This is all due to some one picking up their camera and taking a photo of these men otherwise we would not have known this happened. This is why documentary photography was important it was unstaged art.

The opposite to this was Tableaux. Tableaux is photography that is staged to look like a scene usually inspired by novels, film, art and any other visual and maybe non visual creative format. They would take scenes out of these forms of media and make whats essentially still life and photograph this. Tableaux was first seen in the at royal weddings where actors would imitate statues from paintings. They would not move until they did another scene. This was theatre with no dialogue, telling a story with just one still scene at a time. When it came to photography it wasn’t much different. The photographer would take photos of people that have been placed by the photographer themselves to convey a meaning and/or a story maybe relating to their own experiences or to mimic art.

The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic tableau according to Jean-François Chevrier are:

“They are designed and produced for the wall. summoning a confrontational experience on the part of the spectator that sharply contrasts with the habitual processes of appropriation and projection whereby photographic images are normally received and “consumed”

Jean-François Chevrier was the first to use the term tableau in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970s and 1980s in an essay titled “The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography” in 1989.

‘Small Town America’ By Gregory Crewdson     https://francessmithphotoworks.wordpress.com/tag/tableaux-photography/

As you can see with the photo above it has clearly been staged with props, actors, costumes and a specific location to convey a certain message. Compare this to documentary photography the subject often have their photo taken in the environment they are already in it is more of a matter of recording and maybe this may naturally translate into a message. This photo has clearly been set up and framed and set up with the proper lighting to make an ideal image. Tableaux is all about making a false reality showing the view a distorted and manipulated version of the world. Where as documentary photography is all about showing the world in its rawness whether that’s hard to view or not.

Documentary photography; what is it? Is it news for the photographers? Is it imagery with a story, a meaning? Is it boring? Is it powerful? Can it be used to raise issues mainstream media doesn’t? Can it be controversial? Yes.

A document is a piece of paper with important information on; it holds meaning.

A documentary is a programme on TV. It is also a way to convey important information to an audience.

What’s a documentary image? Most people forget about this form of inflicting an emotion onto the viewer but still, it is a powerful source of information – it’s a visual device.

Documentary imagery is a way to derive emotions and feelings from its viewers. It was David Bate, professor of photography at the University of Westminster in London that drew on the idea of documentary photography not just having the ability to record events but also “to enlighten and creatively educate” people about “life itself”. (Bate, D. (2016). Photography: The Key Concepts). There is a certain emotion you can achieve from observing documentary photography that you may not be able to access from contemporary photography, in that documentary imagery can be very captivating due to the context and concept of its being and how an image can tell the story of a person who then becomes the character in a story, much like in a novel.

It is difficult to define exactly what is meant by documentary photography because, widely speaking, the concept of photography is challenging to define because there are no set rules to what photography is and how you should go about taking pictures. This is why there are so many pioneers of the art form; especially surrounding documentary imagery. For example, in the first examples of documentary photography, it was used to encourage social reform. However, the first publications of these photos were first forced through by Lewis Hine; an American sociologist and photographer who used his camera to push change in society. He photographed child labour – an increasing problem in the early 1900s. Being part of The National Child Labour Committee, from 1908 and over the next decade of his life, he turned his focus from teaching to documenting child labour hoping to end the practice through his visual stories. I suppose that, looking at documentary photography as a source of powerful storytelling, there is no real need to define what it is. Each photo produced with the intention to “document” is its own visual story and this is what defines not only the medium but also the context of each image – one snap-shot moment can live in history as a utility of social change. It is said that ambiguity in photographs can be used as its strength as opposed to its weakness – a way of encouraging interrogation from viewers as people don’t want to provide direct answers from their work – they want it to provide a feeling, a thought and the confusion that may come is what drives the human mind to look at things differently – Jonny Briggs, a world-renowned contemporary photographer explained his experiment with primary school children in which he asked them whether they like being confused when looking at art. One student response that resonated with me as I feel it is so relevant comment on the fact that being confused allows you to have an argument with yourself. This is what photography is about – interpreting things form your view and although documentary photography was very direct, modernised imagery is not.

Tableaux imagery, much like documentary, is a pictorial narrative and it aims to show a scene which constructs a meaning for the audience, however, the difference being it the format. With documentary photography traditionally used to create a fly-the-wall effect, the photographers aim to subtly show the lives of ordinary people with them often being oblivious to it – it often takes just a click of the camera in order to document that moment in time. Tableaux phtooagrohy, however, constructs a narrative through staging people in a set-up scene to tell a visual story through the particular environment. The style of photography derives from first instances of theatre and art where tableaux was frequently used on stage or in a painting. Tableaux derives from the French term ‘Tableaux Vivant’ meaning ‘living picture’. It was first used to describe a painting or photograph in which characters are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the viewer. The difference between documentary and tableaux is that one is in a staged environment and one is ‘real-life’ and therefore, it can be argued that documentary holds more meaning and purpose.

Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment in the Victorian and Edwardian era.

Looking at tableaux photography, and, in particular, the work of Gregory Crewdson, a Brooklyn based tableaux photographer, the style has a very slick and polished effect to them. With regards to documentary photography, composition and framing, or whether one part of the photograph was blurred didn’t really matter or have an effect on the outcome. For a tableaux image to work to its best effect, it is likely it would take much planning to find the best locations and then to pull of the image through trial and error of different poses and set-ups. Gregory Crewdson is known as the photographer with a movie-style budget for casting, locations and make-up and props.

I would argue that tableaux photography aims to romanticise and dramatise the subjects through the use of costumes and how intricately their body positioning is paid attention to and this can however cause ambiguity as the action which is present in the image is not always explicitly presented to the audience, whoever, with documentary, it aims to show in its most raw form, the actuality or what life can hand us.

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.

The definition for archive is: “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.”  Archives come in different forms, each having different purposes which we can use to explore others purposes, along with our own through the use of public, family and personnel archives.

The public archives are used for the study of Jersey in many forms. Publicly funded libraries from the Government are important in preserving the identity of a place in order for us and future generations to explore. Due to public archives being open to such a diverse audience, this means there is a diverse collection that can be used for a wide range of purposes.  The collection of historical records compiled from a range of sources paints a picture of each differing viewpoint on the context of the world at that time.

“What is the source’s purpose, what is it trying to show and how accurate is it?”  Are the questions that we can consider and allow us to delve into the uniqueness of each bit of historical material.  In doing this we can assess what relevance the archive has on each person today, and how they can possibly relate to it.  In this respect, the public archives purpose is to enhance our understanding of where humanity has come from, how far it has come, and how from this we can guess where we are going as a generation.  This incorporates a lot of relevance as one day, our lives and memories will be locked into an archive for future generations to look at us the way we are looking at these older generations, which of course then becomes a matter of perception.  Today’s ideology of perception arguably has a completely different meaning than back when the archives stated in the mid-19^th century.

Regarding the features of society, when there wasn’t room for much more than the very dominating, traditional culture, now there is an encouragement for individual and freedom of expression of culture.  This contradicts the culture of the archive in a sense that, we are essentially living with the opposing shadow of traditionalist culture over today’s freedom of culture.  Interestingly, issues at the time of the mid 1800’s have to now show developments in areas of life and also the struggles in life.  Arguably these struggles as each generation has passed have helped grow into a certain rebelliousness that has led to the free culture that we live with today.  So therefore, we must in a sense be somewhat thankful for those who have preserved history in the archive, who may have documented the good’s and bad’s of their own times.  For examples works depicting issues of poverty in the 19^th century, and further more modern times, have evolved and essentially undermined traditionalist culture and taken us closer to where we are now.  Therefore we can perhaps use todays issues, to predict how through the archive will record this and impact future generations who in turn will develop and impose their own culture on top of ours.  Essentially, the role of the archive is a repeating cycle of past cultures that determine where future cultures are going.

In contrast, the purpose of a family archive is to preserve the history of our own family’s lives on a more personal basis.  This leads us onto why as humans we are interested in pursuing such a task.  Of course, unlike a public archive which is designed for everyone’s benefit, a family archive is of more sentimental value, designed to show the history and through this the relationships, the struggles, those special moments through time in order so that we can relive those times, and remember our feelings towards a preserved moment from a family archive.  Within my own family, the family archives, represent a bind compilation of moments that show my family’s special moments.  Each member of the family upon viewing these images, has a personnel emotion that is connected to that emotion, and when as a family we come together to discuss these emotional attachments towards a captured significant moment in my family’s lives, we can empathise with each other’s viewpoints.

Interestingly family archives essentially strengthen families’ bond, by enhancing our memories of the past which unites us as we enter into the future.  By recording our time together as a family, apart from it strengthening our relationships, we can use family archives to show the evolution of how our own family changes.  In this sense, as children grow up, become parents and have their own kids, family archives can allow us to explore the cycles of that which we go through in life.  In a sense, the family is always developing and evolving; however with this idea of cycles repeating themselves, it shows that once the circle has gone on a full cycle and we come back where we started with children of our own, we can compare the changes from when we were children ourselves.  In a sense, in the short term, the value of an archive is to bring a family closer together to enhance their relationships, and in the long term can be used to show the difference between each cycle of life and therefore has a purpose that repeats itself but is all the more significant.

Referring back to the point of family archives representing the sentimental side that archives hold is important.  We find value in anything our family has associations with.  Arguably family archives are more than just associations, they holding special, personnel and intimate memories at the heart of the family.  When sometimes we don’t take into account of an individual, but of a collective group, which allows us to unlock and delve into our family secrets, that is essentially categorises the nature of our family itself within a wider context of the society in which we live in.  This is comparable to the public archives which display, a wide variety of society, allowing us to paint a picture with all these.  However in this sense, it shows a limited picture of wider society, with a strong perception from the family’s lives and point of view and shows rather the life of society, predominately of the family’s lives within a wider context of the bigger society.

On the issue of family archives presenting a limited perspective, interestingly we are more selective of what we include in our archives.  For example, if we want to present the dynamics of the family, it hardly shows reality as each photograph trying to capture the type of family who we want to be, essentially missing the undesirable sides to the family.  This means that it is important like with the public archive to recognise a sort of family identity, an especially so with a family who may have lost identities and as time goes on like with the idea of cycles, can understand the foundations of the family.  An example of this is through time our imagination on past events can affect the historical side of what actually happened, and so through the family archive, its value allows us to ensure that we have a stronger grounding in our own family’s character and nature.

On the other hand, personnel archives which in a sense derive from the previous archives are originally have been much more intimate and private to most people. However nowadays the terms are changing, where personnel archives are being shared with others, and personnel archives are now about photographs which we don’t want to share. Now it seems to be a matter of how we want to appear, which strongly contradicts how public and family archives function in terms of their purpose. With private archives, now becoming more like public archives, with this, private archives are arguably taking the roles of public archives as they are being opened to everyone. Interestingly, the photos that are kept are often photographs that don’t want to be shared, are photographs that tend not to be focused on how others would perceive them and judge the, hence why they aren’t shown. Arguably unlike family and public archives which are slightly linked, with the opening of public archives this shows how society is interested in how they appear, lacking a sense of authenticity.

Furthermore, private archives are almost unintentionally stored. For example, as photographs are taken to be initially shared, and photographs that contradict how that person wants to be appear are stored and not deleted. This means that personnel archives are taking the form of photographs how we may not want to appear, but in reality aside from social media, that is how we look in person. This contrasts how a family archive works which emphasises the idea of how we can look back on memories to be rebuilding family foundations of who the family’s identity is, because nowadays a personnel archive stores the photographs representing who we are avoiding to be as perhaps it breaches the norms of society. This means that as were are essentially, hiding from ourselves of who we really are, undermining the role of a family archive in bonding who a particular family is, dictated by each individuals character, however each individuals character is being influenced by their own personnel archive resulting in a changed family life. Interestingly there appears to be a link with the idea of a public archive here, where like through time there was a certain culture barrier that restricted much than traditionalist, conservative culture that is similar today, with people only, accepting the same culture of everyone else.