Life Through the Lens: Pioneers of Documentary Photography

A picture may be worth a thousand words. Does this mean that images are better at telling the truth?

The early part of the Twentieth Century saw the rise of photo journalism, as the young medium of photography found a way of making itself useful in documenting human experience. Men and women of uncommon courage and persistence shaped the way future generations would see the world around them; most of them were “odd ducks” who didn’t fit easily into normal society but could serve handsomely as advocates for people who were completely outside of that realm. They spent hours among people they didn’t know, often in adverse circumstances, all the while lugging expensive and bulky equipment across the countryside or cityscape. They developed images on glass plates, a tedious process.

Please enjoy this historical gallery of documentary photographs from three pioneers of the field with quotes from or about the artists. Click the links to investigate further. Images are in the Public Domain unless otherwise credited. All others are used in accordance with Fair Use Policy.

Doris Ulmann (1882-1934)

Miss Ulmann’s point of view about the people she photographed was quite simple. She concluded that there would always be someone with a snapshot camera to photograph the pretty girls with frills, dresses and curled hair, made-up eyes and lips. She was concerned not with these people, but with genuine, downright individuals. You had to be an individual, a character more or less, before she was interested in you even a little bit. 

–John Jacob Niles, The Call Number, v.19 no.2 Spring 1958, © University of Oregon Press

Niles was Ulmann’s assistant and later achieved fame as a collector and arranger of folk music. To read more about her and the difficulties of the early photographic process from Mr. Niles, click here.

Known for the sensitivity and respect that she gave those she photographed, from mountain men and women of Appalachia to the descendants of slaves in South Carolina, Ulmann was a pictorialist who posed her subjects in ways that she felt revealed truth about them.

Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)

…people say they need to express their emotions. I’m sick of that. Photography doesn’t teach you to express your emotions, it teaches you to see.

–Berenice Abbott, Art News, January 1981

Berenice Abbott wasn’t one for sentimentality, although her work is far from emotionless. For her, documentary photos were about the relationship between human beings and their environment and a successful image captured that relationship candidly, without the artist posing the shot. She was famous for her visions of New York City and would later become one of the first science photographers. That work lies out of the scope of this article, but is fascinating. You can read about it here.

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

–-Dorothea Lange

Employed by the United States Government as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, Lange used her camera to reveal the plight of families made destitute by the  combined forces of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, which killed crops across American farmlands. These efforts were largely applauded. Things were far different when she documented the struggles of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II. The US Army suppressed those photos and most remained locked away for more than sixty years. You can read about them here. A true journalist, Lange’s devotion to the oppressed and impoverished guided her vision more that any aesthetic principles.

Documentary photography chronicles life, both the mundane and the extraordinary. Photojournalists and amateur photographers alike exult in capturing the fleeting moment, freezing a thought or emotion for posterity. And yet a photo is subject to interpretation and manipulation, revealing a combination of truth and illusion that can bring out the unexpected or project something that isn’t even there. The camera cannot decipher motivation, nor does it present a complete story, being only a moment plucked from a richer timeline. Technology has added to the potential for creating propaganda. What once would have required posing or staging can be done, and is done, through digital manipulation.

Images shape who we trust and can be used to build or destroy empathy. We need artists today who will take photos that show the world as they see it and we need them to be honest about the accuracy of that vision.