Tag Archives: Documentary Photography

Mikhael Subotzky – “To See as a Photographer Sees” (2012)

Mikhael Subotzky’s photographic work combines the directness of the social documentary mode with a questioning of the nature of the photographic medium itself. His work has focused on the inside and outside of South Africa’s notorious prisons, the small town of Beaufort West, and Ponte City. His work has been exhibited widely in major galleries […]

BERENICE ABBOTT: “PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE CROSSROADS (EXCERPTS)” (1951)

Under the El at the Bowery, New York, c. 1950 By Berenice Abbott, excerpts from Universal Photo Almanac, 1951 The world today has been conditioned, overwhelmingly, to visualize. The picture has almost replaced the word as a means of communication. Tabloids, educational and documentary films, popular movies, magazines, and television surround us. It almost seems […]

Walker Evans – The Poetry of Plain Seeing (2000)

“While Evans gave much effort to photographing poor people, their houses, rooms and the things they made, it is far from clear that poverty is the point of his best pictures.”   By Leo Rubinfien, originally published in Art in America, December 2000 A traveling retrospective (2000) prompts the author to recall the austere formalist–and […]

Interview with Bill Owens on Photographing the Suburban Soul (2005)

 “I enjoy cooking, dogs, cats, kids, soccer, and living here.” “No one would have predicted I would succeed at anything.” Interview by Robert Hirsch of Light Research Bill Owens’s Suburbia (1972) is a quintessential photographic study of suburban California life and of its rituals. Owens followed with Our Kind of People (1975), which examined political, […]

Dorothea Lange – “Documentary Photographs” (2012)

Dorothea Lange’s stirring images of migrant farmers and the unemployed have become universally recognized symbols of the Great Depression. Later photographs documenting the internment of Japanese Americans and her travels throughout the world extended her body of work. Watch the video to hear Lange discuss how she began her documentary projects for the Farm Security […]

Interview with Photographer Donna Ferrato (1998)

Janice witnessed the murder of her friend, Kim, whose husband stabbed her to death at the bus stop. Oakland, Calif., 1988. “In my experience, women who’ve been abused by their husbands, if they can get away from him, get into a shelter, and start going to support groups, they heal.”   Interview with Photographer Donna […]

An Interview with Walker Evans (1971)

  Interview with Walker Evans Conducted by Paul Cummings in Connecticut, October 13, 1971 In New York City, December 23, 1971 PAUL CUMMINGS: It’s October 13, 1971 – Paul Cummings talking to Walker Evans at his home in Connecticut with all the beautiful trees and leaves around today. It’s gorgeous here. You were born in […]

DAVE ANDERSON: “Strangers and Friends – Rough Beauty” (2006)

“Strangers and Friends” By Anne Wilkes Tucker, foreword to Rough Beauty Small towns are typically closed communities, outwardly friendly, but suspicious of anyone who is not a resident. Carrying a camera escalates those suspicions.i Paparazzi journalism and “candid camera” TV have also sensitized people to how easily a photographer can denigrate and caricature his subjects. […]