Document What is a document What does it

Document: -What is a document? -What does it mean to document something?

A definition from the dictionary… …an object such as a movie, photograph, or audio recording that contains information and can be used as evidence Encarta® World English Dictionary

Contemporary Documentary Images

OVERVIEW: The term ‘document’ is virtually synonymous with the medium of photography itself. Indeed, it could be said that every photograph is in one sense or another a document, since it is always a record of something, a document of an occurrence. Throughout time some contemporary art photographers are making images that visually speak as close to the “truth” as we can get using photography…and others make visual images and stories that are completely false and contrived.

Approach 1: Objective Truth: Where the photography aims to be realistic, and most importantly truthful. In this approach documentary could be seen as a kind of proof or witness. "I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated. " (James Nachtwey)

Approach 2: Anthropology/Archiving Anthropological/Archiving: When the artist creates documentary images from a curatorial, archival, or anthropological standpoint. Usually these images are taken from multiple points of view and incorporate writing/journalism, or other important visual evidence. Sophie Calle “The Blind”

Sophie Calle

Les Tombes (Father and Mother) 1990

I go into room 30. Only one bed has been slept in, the on the right. There is a small bag on the luggage stand. A beautifully ironed silk nightgown lies on the chair that has been pulled up near the bed: it clearly has never been worn. Everything else is still in the traveling bag. All I see there is men’s clothing: grey trousers, a grey striped shirt, a pair of socks, a toilet kit (razor, shaving cream, comb, aftershave lotion), a dog-eared photograph of a group of young people surrounding an older woman, a passport in the name of M. L. , male sex, Italian nationality, born in 1946 in Rome, his place of residence, five foot seven, blue eyes. The bathroom is empty, so is the closet, but in the drawer of the night table I find: a box of Panter cigars, a fountain pen, airmail stationary, a leather box with the initials M. L. On a piece of paper is the address of a Mr. and Mrs. B. in Florence, a wallet with five identical photographs of a blond woman and a wedding photograph showing the man in the passport in a tuxedo and the blond woman in a wedding gown. (Text Passage from The Hotel, Room 30)

Frence Intelligence Officer, Louise 2007

Exquisite Pain (Count Down-67) 2000

Approach 3: Narrative/Tells a Story: Here the artist creates images in a series for a show, book, or collection that will help to tell a larger story about a broader topic. The artist works to inform the viewer about the story based on content and a sequence of images in a specific way. Duane Michels, “Suspicion”

"Raised by Wolves" Documents the lives of teenage runaways who live on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Recorded between 1987 and 1993, Jim Goldberg was on the California streets photographing and interviewing his adolescent subjects, their social workers and the police. They all lend a distinct dimension to the harrowing picture of American urban life, and the adversarial institutional culture surrounding it.

A combination of photographs and video stills, found documents, and handwritten texts by the subjects themselves create a scrapbook of the stark and unsparing lives. At its heart, this book is a compassionate and moving study of adolescent life in America, of displaced and misunderstood youths. It reveals the myriad traps which are set by drugs, violence, and exploitation, and the ultimate longing for happiness.

Approach 4: Document a Performance Approach 4: Where the artist creates a series of images to document a performance. Erwin Wurn one minute sculptures

one minute sculptures: documentation

"Inspections, and Looking for a Bomb, " from the series "Instructions on How to Be Politically Incorrect" (2002 -03), by Erwin Wurm. C-Print.

Approach 5: Falsify a Truth: An approach when the artist questions the authority of the photograph itself…can a photographer undermine the supposed ‘truth’ in an image? Does a photograph really tell the truth? Alexander Apostol

Apóstol's latest project, 'Residente Pulido' (Polished Flats, 2002) is a follow-up on this theme. The nationalistic/modernist architecture dates from the 1950 s, when the economies of Venezuela and other Latin American countries grew explosively, fueled by oil production. With digital techniques Apóstol edits out all the entrances and windows, and covers the outside walls with digital textures of glass, porcelain, and concrete. This intervention turns the fifty-year-old apartment flats into impenetrable, solid monuments.

The massive “statues” not only remind one of better, now bygone times; but for Apóstol these buildings with their closed, hard exterior are also a metaphor for the arrogant, chauvinistic, masculine influence that often dominates South American society.

Brainstorming Directions: Brainstorm four different things, (places, objects, people, groups, performances) that you could document, and then apply an approach of documentary photography to identify ways you can photograph each of them.