Photographs by their nature can be viewed quickly, or dwelled upon for a while, but inevitably we must move on. Our time frame for the image is set by us. A subconscious inner clock decides when enough is enough. There’s no rhythm or reason, just a feeling that another photograph is required to be scrutinized. Photography documentaries, however, take over our inner clock of how, when, and in what environment we will see images. By surrendering our decision regarding duration, we also allow our opinion of the work to be swayed because the filmmaker will decide the context of our gaze, subtly suggesting the importance of what we are viewing.
I can still recall my early obsession with photography and how all-consuming it quickly became. Then I discovered that people made films dissecting this world of image makers whose work I would stare at and study. I wondered: Does that help? I desperately wanted the static print to divulge more information than it was clearly willing to impart.
What makes photography so powerful is the minimal amount of evidence it shows, allowing the viewer to create their own quite different narratives. This can also bring along its own set of issues. If you were to study the image for long enough, like learning a foreign language, you can decipher some, or part, of a meaning that is there. But what will that be—and is it, in fact, what was intended? That also assumes we are not expected to merely feel something—and not analyze anything.
Photography documentaries do not necessarily tell us an answer we cannot get from the still image, but they partly bridge the gap between the unspoken thought process and intent of an artist and the framed image hanging on a gallery wall.
One of the first photo docs I came across shortly after beginning my love affair with photography was the collaboration between photographer Martin Parr and director Nicholas Barker, From A to B: Tales of Modern Motoring. It was the follow-up to Signs of the Times, a critique of people’s houses and how people chose to exist within them. This project fed into Parr’s obsession with the British class system.
In the U.K. during the ’90s, Parr was at the forefront of photography, the shining star. His brightly lit images decorated the inner pages of numerous magazines. For him to be a part of a TV series for the BBC seemed like a natural progression. Britain was starting to come out of a recession and there was a sense of optimism. Parr and Barker tapped into this moment and the motor vehicle became the metaphor. A book was released at the same time. The portraits were paired with quotes from the series. The doc gave an insight into people’s hopes and desires, and couples’ dynamics within the confined spaces of cars.
Surprisingly and controversially, there was an overriding feeling that these people were in some ways being ridiculed. This was no longer the era of the serious photo essay but the beginning of lifestyle photography. Publications wanted positive or quirky colour images to show advertisers their magazine was no longer going to pair their adverts with serious black and white imagery of disaster, death, and destruction. Parr and Barker’s doc bought into this new vision. Although publicised as a Nicholas Barker series, Parr’s cynical style and fingerprints were all over the filming. It was a style I would later go on to question. The prolonged film sequences of motorists saying nothing, shot by Barker, could be Parr hovering with his camera around his subject awaiting that decisive moment to release the shutter and expose the motorist to playful ridicule.
Within the photo doc genre, From A to B: Tales of Modern Motoring focuses on a particular project rather than Parr’s overall body of work. Looking at the project as a whole, it feels like the book is a by-product of the series. It’s possible the book could stand alone, but the doc increases and reinforces its impact, while the book helped sell the series. Images were displayed in many service stations all over the U.K. Motorists would be bombarded by large vibrant colour images while ordering their tea. The series became a hit in the U.K. Its clever use of image placement in public spaces gently encouraged people (especially motorists) to sit down in front of the TV to engage with this doc.
Jennifer Baichwal’s The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia (2002) follows and interviews Adams, using his own archive of video footage and still photos to investigate his motivations for making portraits of impoverished Appalachian residents. My introduction to this doc came shortly after I decided to do a postgrad degree in Documentary Media at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University). It had been 20 years since finishing my undergrad in photography and I was aware of how attitudes toward confrontational image making had changed in that time. Watching this film in a room of 20-plus students and then discussing it made me reevaluate some of the images I had made in the years between degrees.
I recall the outrage in the room as, one by one, thoughts were made public of how immoral Adams was by profiting through images of a group of people who were not only poor but maybe also unaware of how many ways an image could be deciphered. He reinforced 100 years of stereotypes. Adams lit them with harsh flashlights to exaggerate features and surroundings. The doc not only exposed Adams’ sometimes shameless tactics, but through interviewing well known photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, it examined the hypocrisy that can exist when photographing and, in particular, when representing people. At one point during the doc, Mark talks positively about an Adams image of a person with mental disabilities declaring, “I think he’s shown in the most respectful way.” This is her own subjective stance but if she was to have said something negative, then her own practice, which involved shooting at-risk teenage prostitutes and drug addicts, would be in a vulnerable place.
It never ceases to amaze me how photographers have this ability to make images that are clearly being judgmental of the subject matter but will then reinterpret their position to justify displaying the end product. Of course, I’m generalising, and there are many ethical image makers in the world but even they will struggle with representations of the “other.” There are certain phrases that will always make me suspicious of any photographer, and Adams uses a classic one near the beginning of Baichwal’s doc: “I’m examining the human condition.” I came across students during my undergrad years that would use this phrase too much and I’m certain there’s been times I’ve reached into my bag of clichés and pulled this one out to rationalise my own work. It’s what someone says when they’re desperately trying to intellectualize their images.
What Baichwal’s doc shows is not only how a photographer works to groom a community under the guise that he’s really one of them, but also how photography in general is manipulated to turn a truth into fiction. The more I “examine” photography, the more it bothers me. I know I have taken unflattering images in the past thinking I was saying something important with them. Now I believe I was simply trying to be ambitious and ruthless. I admired the likes of Martin Parr when I first got into photography and wanted to emulate him and his success. But later I began to realise there was a form of dishonesty to this approach. That doesn’t make his images any less captivating. For such a simple act of pressing a button to create a photo, it still astounds me just how complicated and, to borrow the favourite word used on my postgrad degree course, “problematic” image making can be.
Parr and Adams have much in common. Photographers like them live for capturing decay and class. Poverty porn and ruin porn. They then spin a narrative that allows the public a way to view them and then buy their books and images guilt-free. Both Parr and Adams mercilessly punch down on their subjects and trick them with the notion that they are “one of them.” It’s cheap tabloid imaging making. At least the paparazzi are honest about their trade. But few tabloid photographers, apart from Weegee, make the type of images that will end up on high-profile gallery walls.
I suspect you could describe all war documentaries as disturbing. The latest Oscar winner for feature docs, 20 Days in Mariupol, is a prime example. It’s impossible to forget once watched. War photographers are an unusual collection of image makers. They stand alone from every other discipline of photography.
I remember listening to lectures at university given by such photographers. It always seemed to me as if the events they had witnessed somehow came through in their appearance. Some would arrive wearing green combat jackets as if they’d just come from the front line. Others wore nothing but black, with an occasional ponytail hair style. There was a definite sense of machoism in their demeanour. They all held a level of seriousness that was absent in most other visiting lecturers. It’s certainly not a criticism of this type of work, more simply a commentary of what can happen to people when they are constantly bombarded by horror.
The photo doc War Photographer (2001) follows James Nachtwey both at home and abroad. His work is sometimes hard to look at: unflinching, raw. Christian Frei’s photo doc pairs with Nachtwey’s photography effortlessly. Nachtwey’s work highlights places and people not only affected by war but famine and drug addiction. Human catastrophes on a grand scale. How do you walk away from what seems to be a starving child laying on the ground in Africa? Frei’s doc explains that these photos were taken in feeding camps. There is almost a sense of relief knowing this. My faith in the photographer has not been diminished. Some images do require these types of explanations; it’s the only way it is bearable to look at them.
Nachtwey is a quiet and softly spoken man, dressed in regular clothes which makes Frei’s film even more compelling as his personality appears at odds with his images. As tough and as brutal as his work is, it never feels cheap and self-serving like Adams’ work does. Nachtwey’s work has a sense of being more genuine, as if he is aware of how advanced and mindful the modern viewer of photography, and docs, has become.
Perhaps what conflict photo docs do best is to imagine how you would react in the settings like those in which photographers Nachtwey finds themselves. Could we photograph mourners at a graveside crushed by grief, intruding into the most personal moments imaginable? The still image only ever tells a small part of the story. It’s easy to forget what’s going on outside of the frame. There’s an uncropped world that can give meaning and context to a grainy black and white photo. The photo doc shows this.
Truly successful photographers are an unusual breed. Having the ability to see or construct a captivating interpretation of our world might well be the easy part. The hard part is having the single-minded capacity to never quit regardless of any obstacle. However, the reward of risking everything including the prospect of dying destitute may be a place in photographic history if the right people find or have access to your work.
Consider the doc Finding Vivian Maier (2014). It’s the astonishing story of an American nanny who took images of people mainly on the street, creating stunning intimate portraits of strangers. Her work only became discovered by chance after her death. This could be an idea only imagined by a screenwriter made into a Hollywood drama: a classic tale of a treasure hunt, only it starts with the unearthing of the pile of gold and what’s then revealed is the trail of breadcrumbs to whom this photographer was. These “unknown artist docs” may be the first time the viewer has ever seen their work—with the revelation enhanced by dramatic music or narration.
We are not only shown the work, but directors John Maloof and Charlie Siskel uncover a mystery that makes the viewer look harder than they may have done before. We find ourselves staring in wonder at how it is possible that Maier never had success in life. We instinctively want to know more about her. A tragic end consisting of loneliness, poverty and obscurity is how the screenwriter might summarize the final act. And the viewer is not disappointed.
Does this somehow raise our expectation of the work? For there is now the romance of an artist whose work is applauded only after their demise. As good as the work is deemed to be, it is now even better since we have heard the struggle and the sacrifices made to make the images. All these suggestions come directly from the photo doc itself, not from someone looking at the images in a Manhattan gallery. And of course, with the passing of time, these photographs become a historic record of not only an America that no longer exists but also of how a nanny in her spare time would religiously take images, seemingly for only herself.
A second example is similar but slightly different. The British photographer Tish Murtha had some minimal success during her youth but would have surely faded into anonymity if not for her daughter, Ella. Paul Sng’s documentary Tish (2024), made with Ella’s cooperation, explores the story of a woman, born into a poor working-class family in the Northeast of England, who produced extraordinary photographs of her time and place. Murtha documented the deindustrializing of her hometown in the ’70s and ’80s under the notorious Thatcher Tory government rule. Her photos are powerful and political but with a poet’s eye, which make them extraordinary to view simply as objects.
What both docs have in common is how complex these two women were. They were determined not to falter from their visions. Tish Murtha’s images are visually tender and exhibit compassion for the subjects. This is reinforced by family, friends and photographer/ curator Gordon MacDonald who helped to exhibit her work. Maier’s work is more objective but does capture intimate details of her subjects, particularly children.
Through these docs, we begin to see real people emerge. We start to understand their passions and personalities. We will never have the opportunity to meet these people so instead we establish a second hand relationship with them.
When we hear stories of photographers like Murtha and Maier, we see them as working class underdogs and we instinctively want to cheer for them. We know their personal stories don’t have fortunate endings. But there is at least pleasure derived through their photographs being appreciated by the public forever.
The photo documentary adds to the enjoyment of still images, offering us important personal information. How, when, where, what, and who may all be answered. But it feels what they do most is to reinforce that these image makers can be just as flawed and complex as the next person. What’s different is that the photographers profiled in these docs have had the courage to go out and show the rest of us their version of the world. We won’t all like what they see, and history may not necessarily always judge their work kindly. But they have all challenged our relationship with a world busting at the seams with images.
