Style Over Substance.. Over Style:Â Art or Documentary, blurred lines within a single medium
There is often a tension seen between documentary and art, a contrast in objectives and aesthetics. Photography lending itself to objectivity, but flipped by art. The friction is between the terms used to label work, rather than the work itself. It is a problem created not inherent.
For both documentary and art, the setting in which they are seen and the context they are viewed in necessarily affects the images, what they represent, their âmessageâ.
The sense of conflict comes from the idea of âart for artâs sake,â a purity in form and motive.
âThe artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is artâs aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meaning in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.â
- Oscar Wilde, Preface to âThe Picture of Dorian Greyâ, 1890.
It is for the image itself, not what it represents, that you make a picture. This, in opposition to documentary photography: using the supposed objectivity of the medium to faithfully record a scene or subject.
Despite these definitions, the line between them is worn. Art not being against direct engagement with social issues, documentary taking form into consideration when presenting its subjects.
- James Mollison - School, Gujarat, India. - Moscow, Russia - Nairobi, Kenya -
Consideration here being what led photographer James Mollison to amalgamate of the âcrucial momentsâ of a scene into a single shot in his âPlaygroundâ series. Tampering with the composition to create a scene that was never real at one moment. This with the considerations for lighting, composition and drama that are present in the photography of many Magnum photographers including JĂ©rĂŽme Session (new, full-member of Magnum). His image of a priest blessing protesters in Ukraine looks like its subjects are arranged in renaissance proportions. This care in composition can be seen in most of his work.
âI donât like rigid categories. Sometime there is art in journalism and journalism in art. Conscience, heart, beauty, balance and loss of balance are essentials for me. âÂ
-Jerome Sessini, UKRAINE. Kiev. An Orthodox priest blesses the protesters on a barricade. February 20, 2014 -
Photo Journalist Yuri Kozyrevâs work similarly presents his subjects, being in the canon of events from 9/11 that makes up the War on Terror including a a series shot in Irak at the time (see top image). The subject being such an iconic and contemporary conflict, you cannot escape the reality of the images. The clarity of his frames, that go further than only reporting, articulate the nature and consequences of the war through a handling of visual language.
I am going to be describing genres here, so please donât be too dismissive because I know they are arbitrary. The images that tend to be labelled as art use a more overtly metaphorical visual language, using the aesthetics and imagery of the image itself to directly influence the viewerâs interpretation of it. This is particularly the case in the photographs of young people that preoccupy the vogue on social media platforms like Instagram or Tumblr. The pronounced emotional colouring of the scenes and the active interpretation of the reader. Jessica Levinâs photography (see more of her work in IYL Vol. III) shows this in her representations of friends and landscapes: without context they are freely associated by the viewer. They have heightened interpretive potential in their ambiguity, an aspect not afforded by photography focused on reportage.
- Jessica Levin, taken from Flickr page - 2011 -
Researching this I found it difficult to find any âArt Photographyâ that wasnât also as documenting something. A current cultural trend being the conflation of genres, most clearly seen in music, but also in any art of this post-post-post-modern world. Even traditional religious art is in the business of âdocumentingâ scenes from the Gospel. Nothing is without context, it would be incomplete.
- Jessica Levin, taken from Flickr page - 2011 -
The main difference is the uses of medium. Documentaryâs is to document, implying a faith to the subject that you would not expect from art and its licences. But then some of the things that photographs document (the moon landings, 9/11) stop being only images because of how large they are in the collective psyche. âEarthriseâ and âThe Falling Manâ are examples of this, in their ability to inspire wonder and despair. The images became symbolic, cultural tropes.
âIt is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.â
- Oscar Wilde, Preface to âThe Picture of Dorian Greyâ, 1890.
Like politics, photographs are on a circular spectrum, an axis that confuses the definitions of each as they are both essentially linked. The nuance, complexity and inconsistent contexts of viewing does not endear photography to categorisation. Each discipline informs the other.
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