Documentary photographs: Are they representations of the real?

Depends on who's shooting the images. Some photographers have a different agenda and others of us want to preserve reality.
 
As „truth“ is individual and „reality“ is normally considered as „true“, yes, documentary photographs are showing reality, maybe a personal one, but that does not matter.
 
Garry Winogrand: "Pictures don't tell stories. They show you what something looks like. To a camera."

It's the beholder who 'invents' the story. They have the sense of reality that they project on the image. Their sense of realities differs.

Take that photo of George Bush ^^ to an Amazon Indian and it tells him nothing. Because he cannot relate to anything that is in the picture. He will not know Bush, the cloths he wears and the meaning of the background.

Meaningful pictures of today are the art of tomorrow. When all sense of reality is gone, the image remains.

On another level, your question is irrelevant. Because it is still the (individual) beholder that puts the reality into the interpretation. Some viewers are aware of the fact that they are looking at the photographer's interpretation of the scene, and others are not. There is no way to answer your question for any given group of people or a society. There simply is too much variation.
 
They are my representation of reality, and that is entirely subjective. I describe it as just the what is, is. No agenda, just experiences, feelings, reactions to what is undeniably there.
 
Certainly they represent reality - as much as anything can.
But they can offer but one view of a particular scene.

Anyone who watches NFL football - and the instant replays - knows how much can be changed by different views of the same play.

I've been a newspaper reporter for a little over two decades. It's always been amazing to me how a group of people can witness an event - and not agree on exactly what happened.
 
buzzardkid said:
Garry Winogrand: "Pictures don't tell stories. They show you what something looks like. To a camera."

It's the beholder who 'invents' the story. They have the sense of reality that they project on the image. Their sense of realities differs.
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Agreed. Everything and anything that's photographed is real. If it exists, it's real, and if it isn't real it doesn't exist.

Like a writer of fiction who strings words together in hopes they will prompt specific reactions in readers, photographers hope their images will prompt specific reactions in viewers. Once the words or the photo are turned loose, though, the reader and the viewer supply all the context.
 
tbarker13 said:
Certainly they represent reality - as much as anything can.
But they can offer but one view of a particular scene.

Anyone who watches NFL football - and the instant replays - knows how much can be changed by different views of the same play.

I've been a newspaper reporter for a little over two decades. It's always been amazing to me how a group of people can witness an event - and not agree on exactly what happened.
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Yes, but the reality of what happened does not change, only someone's interpretation or memory of that reality.
 
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wgerrard said:
Yes, but the reality of what happened does not change, only someone's interpretation or memory of that reality.
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As has been pointed out in these discussions on this forum in the past, it's largely an irrelevant distinction since our "interpretation and memory" is our only conduit to whatever is "real"...
 
wgerrard said:
Yes, but the reality of what happened does not change, only someone's interpretation or memory of that reality.
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Dear Bill,

At this point, though, what is 'reality'?

Eighteen months ago, Frances and I were sitting on the balcony of a guesthouse in the Pelopponese. We couldn't believe it. The frogs were going "Brekekkek, coax, coax, brekekkek, coax, coax," just as Aristophanes described 2500 years ago. Our local French frogs just don't make that noise. But: do Greek frogs make a unique noise, and/or were we hearing what we expected to hear?

Our perception is shaped by past experience. How much? And how important are the photos we have seen in the past?

Cheers,

R.
 
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Enoyarnam said:
A simple question. Are documentary photographs just representations of the real, or are they something else, too?
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I actually prepared a long paragraph pointing out the conceptual difficulties and confusions in your question but then thought why bother.

Your question, I'm afraind, is complete nonsense (as in: truely makes no sense). What the hell is a 'representation of the real'?? And what would be a representation of the unreal?? And why only documentary photographs?
 
They're not anything but a moment in time because just a picture by itself cannot show any context at all in my opinion. It is a sound bite.

Reality is a continuously temporal experience that takes place within the context of your own place and time.
 
Simple answer to a simple question is YES or NO.

Simple answer to a complex question is 42.

Complex answers to simple questions - more opinions than answers.

I would be interested in the OP's answer to his own simple question, which would help as a reference point for this discussion.
 
wgerrard said:
Yes, but the reality of what happened does not change, only someone's interpretation or memory of that reality.
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Certainly true. But it is impossible to remove the observer from the equation - whether that observer is a person or a camera. A photograph (or video) is the closest we as humans can come to representing reality.
 
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