New "Approved" Style of Documentary Photography: HAPPY STYLE

NY_Dan

NY_Dan

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I'm starting this thread to learn what other RFF members think of what seems to be the beginning of a new style or trend in documentary photography. I label it "approved" because the movers and shakers such as James Estrin of NY Times Photo Blog and United Photo Industries have demonstrated, and clearly expressed a preference for what I label "happy style" photo documentary approach.

Here's a quote from United Photo Industries: "United Photo Industries is proud to present a solo exhibition of recent work by photographer Dave Jordano on his home-town of Detroit. A kind, personal look at a much-maligned city, Jordano's visual exploration of Detroit does not waste time rehashing worn-out visual tropes of devastation and urban poverty, turning his gaze instead to the people surviving, thriving, making a decent life for themselves against the odds."

... so United Photo Industries evidently believes showing devastation and urban poverty is wasting time. I ask who are they, who is anyone to say how a photographer should approach a subject?

And here's recent quote http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/palestinian-pleasures/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 from James Estrin: "Since the mid-1980s, the visual narrative of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has been predictable: photographs of stone-throwing teenagers confronting Israeli soldiers, refugee camps, mothers mourning children killed in conflicts, and long lines at border crossing points. Particularly dramatic variations on these visual tropes make the front pages and win awards."

I viewed these "happy" Palestinian photos, and personally believe a photo of some children in a wading pool under a tree, while a pretty photo, is no more representative of the totality of living there than a photo of someone burning a flag -- I have no preference -- each is what it is -- a moment.

And in James Estrin's own words, here's a video http://vimeo.com/80464244 on how photographers and their projects are selected for publishing on the NY Times Lens Blog: "...focusing in on how people are being represented, making sure that we're not only seeing the problems in a country or in an ethnic group..."

My questions: Is this a form of political correctness applied to photography? When shooting, should photographers be influenced by this new direction? Personally, I would like photographers to be free of outside voices, and only listen to their inner voice when shooting. I don't think showing sad realities is wrong. Were Salgado and others wasting their time or unfairly representing what they saw?
 
"Objective" documentary photography already exists: Google street view. Photographs taken in the same mechanical fashion in a random moment of the day. Perhaps only the choice of shooting in daylight might be considered a bias.
Everything else is subjective, and depends as much on the circumstances as on the photographer. Editors, have always imposed their choices on reporters, so this is not anything new.
Personally, I believe, photographers should be free to shoot the way they see the world, and editors should be free to show what they want to show. NYT is not the only magazine on the planet. Look elsewhere, if you don't like their line.
On a personal note: I think life and politics are incredibly complex subjects, and deserve to be analyzed and looked at from multiple angles.
 
As mfogiel said, I believe photographers should shoot in whichever way the perceive the world. I just hope this doesn't become a commercial trend and has tons of people doing the same thing
 
Happy starvation; happy war; happy embedded; happy jails; happy genocide; happy poverty; happy racism; happy crime; happy psychiatric hospitals; happy drug abuse. The happy opportunities are endless. Happy happy!
 
I label it "approved" because the movers and shakers such as James Estrin of NY Times Photo Blog and United Photo Industries have demonstrated, and clearly expressed a preference for what I label "happy style" photo documentary approach.
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As I've never heard of them, so I have no idea what they move or what they shake. It just sounds to me like excessive hyperbole or to quote Stewart, twaddle.
 
I don't imagine this will have that great an impact on how news events are covered, truth be told most news coverage including photographic is skewed towards conflict and strife even when it is only one aspect of a community, basically because it's dramatic.
If you were sent to photograph Northern Ireland in the 70's-80's, you needed marching processions, soldiers on checkpoints, rubber bullets and petrol bombs.
Obviously this had a major impact on the people living there, but outside of NI it's all anybody ever saw, the other 95% of normal life was never portrayed.
Maybe news coverage does need a little redressing from time to time.
 
bobbyrab said:
I don't imagine this will have that great an impact on how news events are covered, truth be told most news coverage including photographic is skewed towards conflict and strife even when it is only one aspect of a community, basically because it's dramatic.
If you were sent to photograph Northern Ireland in the 70's-80's, you needed marching processions, soldiers on checkpoints, rubber bullets and petrol bombs.
Obviously this had a major impact on the people living there, but outside of NI it's all anybody ever saw, the other 95% of normal life was never portrayed.
Maybe news coverage does need a little redressing from time to time.
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Good points.
 
NY_Dan said:
...My questions: [1.] Is this a form of political correctness applied to photography? [2.] When shooting, should photographers be influenced by this new direction? Personally, I would like photographers to be free of outside voices, and only listen to their inner voice when shooting. I don't think showing sad realities is wrong. Were Salgado and others [3.] wasting their time or [4.] unfairly representing what they saw?
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To answer your questions -
[1.] IMHO, yes.
The same thinking is afoot here as when cities round up and/or force homeless and poor people off the streets (I am not talking about those who aggressively "ask," - i.e. coerce - people for money or cause other forms of disruption). The fact is that in some cities, The Beautiful People simply do not want to see unwashed, smelly, ragged, poor people; it apparently offends their refined sensibilities. This kind of gentrification (more accurately, bigotry driven by economic and arbitrary aesthetic considerations) for the benefit of the affluent is worlds apart from approaching a subject with an outlook of "what's right or good about this subject?"

[2.] No. Photographers should be influenced by what comes from inside their hearts and minds (internal locus of control), not by what comes from inside the hearts and minds of other people (external locus of control). Of course, if someone is handing you a paycheck, you photograph what they want, when they want, how they want and how many times they want - but that is an entirely different form of photography (commercial photography) than what I think we are talking about here.

[3.] No. As for Salgado and the other titans of documentary photography, the last thing I would call their efforts is a waste of time.

In producing the bodies of work which they wrung themselves out to create, these august gents forged a visual historical archive of people, places and events that will never be seen again. The value of the historical records which the efforts of Salgado and others made possible cannot be underestimated, IMHO. There is no putting a price tag on those hundreds of thousands of negative sheets. Think in terms of what today's photographers - and the public at large - would be missing out on if Vivian Maier's boxes and boxes of negatives would have been tossed into an incinerator after her death.

[4.] No. As far as I have ever known, they were representing the reality of the situation as it appeared before them.

A photographer must be true to his/her own photographic vision of a subject. A "vision" that has been twisted, manipulated and disfigured to please the whims of other people is not a vision. Such a disfigured vision can only produce second rate imagery (been there, done that, never again).

Personally, I would like photographers to be free of outside voices, and only listen to their inner voice when shooting.
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As it should be, IMHO.

Otherwise, it's not really their voice; it's the voice of another person who is using the photographer for what amounts to being a photographic ventriloquist's dummy. That's not a very fulfilling proposition for the photographer, I would have to say.

YMMV.
 
History and its perspectives are always biased. Life is not a bowl of cherries or a ton of bricks. Life looks different depending what side of the tracks you're on or from.
 
I read both instances cited in the OP's remarks as being nothing other than statements indicating that we -- as audiences and as photographers -- have "been there and done that" with shots of decay in Detroit and strife in Palestine. Now we will see something different. It's not to say that one viewpoint/depiction is superior or exists to the exclusion of any other, simply that there are many different aspects of life in these locales and more than one viewpoint may be portrayed richly in photographs.

If you would rather look at ruin porn or the corpses of children lined up in the dust, those images remain available and are as striking as they ever were.
 
I read something once involving 19th Century photographs, lamenting that people moved their hats to the back of their heads to better show their faces to the camera.

So while at the time, a person's face was the most important element, after 150 years, people care more about the hat.
 
kbg32 said:
History and its perspectives are always biased. Life is not a bowl of cherries or a ton of bricks. Life looks different depending what side of the tracks you're on or from.
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People just don't like certain ideas so they put a label on it and then attack the label. Photos from the American Depression or the Dust Bowl can be attacked today for promoting socialism if not already. If photography is to be "fair and balanced" then for every photo of poverty we need to do one more fashion shoot. This way both good and bad sides of starvation can be fairly represented.
 
"Approved" by whom? Who are all of those people? 🙄
But they have good point.
I have seen enough carp shots from war zones nominated as best pictures already.
 
I'm okay with it. I think covering negative sides of a topic has really lots it's edginess and gravity as the "only" way to photograph something. I definitely felt that in iournalism school--the phrase "if it bleeds, it leads" wasn't a joke but a mantra. Of course, good reporting doesn't gloss over the negatives, but it sounds like reporting on the positive side of things is at least becoming more accepted and taken seriously as something different than cheesy calendar and postcard photos.

I'm reminded of an episode of King of the Hill when Luanne goes on a Sinead o'connor streak (and takes up "photojournalism"--taking Polaroids of starving children on the TV)
 
I am quite confident that James (Estrin) was calling for work that is a little more nuanced than 'happy'. If you take the time to watch the interview video with him you hear a much more complex explanation of who finds work with The New York Times via The Lens Blog.

We do need a re - think of how documentary photography represents the world around us and a lot of good, talented people are at it. The Every Day Africa series is a brilliant example and the folks behind it are about the nicest group of photographers I have met.

I don't think anyone, specifically folks like Estrin, who I assure you knows very well the world is not an entirely 'happy' place, is calling for blindly happy work. A more entrenched, nuanced and even approach? Yes indeed.
 
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