Vad är dokumentärfotografi?
Nätverket för fotografi med dokumentär inriktning gör inte anspråk på att förklara begreppet dokumentärfotografi, men vill belysa dess mångfald och svårgripbarhet genom några citat.
Citat
”Documentary is the presentation or representation of actual facts in a way that makes it credible and vivid to people at the time.”
William Stott “Documentary expression and thirties America”, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
”Documents may appear to be neutral sources of historical truth, but documentaries have and present values; they are persuasive, not simply artifactual.”
Paula Rabinowitz “They must be represented. The politics of documentary”, New York: Verso, 1994.
”Dokumentärfotografin är en konstform som beskriver omvärlden utifrån en personlig vision, som grundar sig på djup kunskap och stark inlevelse. Man kan t.o.m. hävda att kunskap måste vara basen för all dokumentärfotografisk metodik.”
Sune Jonsson, Tusen och en bild, 1978.
”En fotografi som arbetar med att analysera en bestämd tidsperiod, en bestämd plats eller en bestämd aspekt på mänskligt liv.” / ”A specific time of period, a specific place or a specific aspect of human life.”
Per L-B Nilsson (1984) vid Högskolan för fotografi i Göteborg och med ett förflutet i USA.
” In a broad sense, all non-fictional representation, in books or in images, is documentary.”
Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, 2002, s. 280.
“Primarily, documentary was thought of as having a goal beyond the production of a fine print. The photographer’s goal was to bring the attention of an audience to the subject of his or her work and, in many cases, to pave the way for social change.”
Karin Becker Ohrn, 1980.
“…it fulfills the minimum condition of documentary: that it provide an account of events that have their own existence outside the frame of the photograph or the confines of the studio walls.”
Liz Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction, 1997, s.101.
“Documentary is seen as a part of the processes of examination described by Focault as ‘a procedure of objectification and subjection’, in which ordinary lives are turned into accounts – into writing or, for that matter, into photographs.”
Liz Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction, 2004, s. 105.
“… the practice has become largely dislocated from its former social and political project.”
Liz Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction, 2004, s. 109.