Documentary photography certainly has an absurd aspect to it, as it is something commonly associated with a snap shot documentation (unplanned recordings) and is scene through social documentary, photo journalism, repotage, street photography and war photography (these are all unpredictable in how they can be documented).
When analyzing the main objectives in documentary photography it is important to take into consideration the contextual meaning to an image adding value to the events happening in that era: historical, personal, visual and cultural contexts and conceptual, highlighting the: idea, meaning, reasoning, thought, notion, concept / essence of the work itself.
Richard Billingham
English photographer Richard Billingham (known best for his book photo-book ‘Ray’s A Laugh’, which documents his home-life; living with his alcoholic father Ray and heavily obese mother Liz) shows the connections Billingham makes himself in his home life documenting with his intensely saturated disposable cameras.
There is a tone of humor in the image above of Billingham’s mother. The combination of his mothers dress and puzzle pieces give the image a textual quality; quick visual connections from the color similarities, giving it a snap shot aesthetic feel.
The snapshot aesthetic and social documentary of the photographers home-life, reminds me of the work of Martin Parr.
Another British documentary photographer Martin Parr, known for his intimate projects looking at anthropological aspects of modern life, especially in England. Martin Parr connects to Richard Billingham with his documentation of the demographic class in society. They are both quiet observers that look at human behavior (looking at social class in some of their work).
From exploring the different types of documentary genres I went out to Christchurch (Dorset) to begin my own documentary work. I noticed on my travels how peculiar it was to see the range of emotions from people feeding birds along the bay.
There is nothing humans gain from feeding birds, but people continuously interact with them and go out of their way to assure the animals get a bit of ‘Hovis bread’ now and again. It seems that humans are perfectly happy to forget what they have going on in their lives for a few minutes which I documented.
I thought this fitted in well with Richard Billingham and Martin Parr with their look and interest in social documentary of human behavior.
The Birds
Christmas Shopping?
After exploring documentary work I started my own objective field study; looking at ‘Christmas’ and the absurd behavior it promotes to people.
My chosen Field study focused on ‘Christmas Shoppers’. With Christmas vast approaching I thought it would be a good idea to document shoppers buying presents for friends and family in preparation for the holidays. It was interesting very plain and basic shopping bags peoples Christmas presents were placed in, due to the highly decorative shop windows that where promoting and luring buyers in; only to give them bags that did not have any connection to Christmas at all.
Caprice Molloy Year 12 