Documentary and Post-Documentary Photography

“Post-documentary photography” has gained increasing prominence in recent years. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the term first emerged in the 1980s and now describes a photographic genre that merges artistic/conceptual approaches with the documentary tradition.¹

As its name suggests, post-documentary photography defines itself in relation to documentary photography. So, perhaps “documentary photography” is a good place to start.

What is Documentary Photography?

Documentary photography aims to record the world in an objective, realistic manner. Photo-journalism — a form of documentary photography — strives to offer an unbiased portrayal of “newsworthy” subjects and current events. Street photography likewise falls within the documentary tradition. While family photographs and travel snapshots could certainly qualify as “documentary photography,” what often distinguishes documentary work is the photographic intention/conceit of aiming to capture the world as documentary evidence, as an artifact, or as part of the historical record — I’m not sure family photography and travel snapshot have this intention at the time of their making. At its core, documentary photography gathers evidence and declares “this is how something was,” “this is truth,” or “this is what happened.”

Central to documentary photography is an implicit claim of truthfulness, objectivity, or factuality. Yet “truth” and objectivity have been problematic concepts throughout photography’s history. Consider photography’s well-documented instances of fabrication (through staging) and bias (through subject and framing).

Documentary photography can be artfully executed, but it fundamentally resists artifice.

The archival intent is important for documentary photographers despite occasional philosophical tensions — recall Robert Doisneau’s observation: “I don’t photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.” Let’s not forget Doisneau himself faced criticism for staging his most renowned photograph: Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville.

Robert Doisneau

What is Post-Documentary Photography?

Post-documentary photography is a practice that moves away from traditional documentary approaches.

One definition suggests that post-documentary photographers are “artists who acknowledge and work with the inherent problems of the photo-documentary tradition.”²

What are these “inherent problems”? Truth. Objectivity. Reality. Post-documentary photography acknowledges that total objectivity remains challenging, if not impossible, because the photographer’s perspective invariably influences the image.

How do post-documentary photographers acknowledge and work with these problems?

Traditional documentary photography seeks to capture objective reality — to document events, people, and places as they exist. Post-documentary photography embraces subjectivity and personal interpretation - it concerns itself less with documenting external realities and more with expressing internal states or exploring subjective perspectives.

In the definition quoted above, the word “artist” does a lot of work as post-documentary photographers align themselves more with the art world than with the world of photo-journalism.³

Their work exhibits more stylistic, artistic, or “poetic” qualities, and the images aren’t necessarily literal representations. Instead, they’re infused with personal meaning, emotions, ambiguities, or concepts that might not be immediately apparent to viewers.

One photography critic notes that post-documentary photography “now frequently refers to a poetic or ambiguous style whose meaning or message is not overdetermined.”⁴

Author, podcaster, and agent Sasha Wolf similarly defines post-documentary photography as

work that emerges from the photographer’s personal engagement with the real world with an emphasis on a subjective, lyrical approach to picture making and storytelling. The post-documentary approach maintains its connection to documentary photography, but is generally opposed to the literal and restrictive styles associated with traditional documentary, journalistic, or editorial photography, and favors individual artistic style.⁵

In his book Core Curriculum, which I reviewed here, Tod Papageorge discusses post-documentary photography without ever using the term. He writes:

… none of the photographers included in [John Szarkowski’s New Documents exhibition] - Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander — nor any other photographers I knew at that time, would have used the word documentary to describe what they were doing in their work. If nothing else, Robert Frank’s The Americans had taken care of that by defining an aesthetic that depended on poetic transformation, rather than an (apparently) literal fealty to a series of facts. ¶ As for me, my initial introduction to serious photography occurred in 1962, when I discovered a couple of early pictures of Cartier-Bresson’s while taking a college course in basic photography. They convinced me, literally on the spot, to be a photographer—and not because I had an itch to document this or that aspect of the world. I saw these pictures as poetry, Cartier-Bresson as a prodigious poet, and photography as a way to possibly do something roughly in the same camp.⁶

It is worth noting that, in the quote above, Papageorge traces this new “poetic” aesthetic back to Cartier-Bresson’s work and Robert Frank’s 1958 book, The Americans.

The director of photography at MoMA, John Szarkowski’s 1967 group exhibition New Documents not only helped establish Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander as influential figures in the medium. It helped us articulate this new photographic approach, one that blends “documentary” photography with an artistic vision.⁷ It blurred the lines between documentary work and poetry, subjectivity, and art.

I should note here that the Magnum photographer Sergio Larrain also saw photography in poetic terms.

Post-Documentary “Storytelling”

The documentary photographer intends to document reality as it exists — capturing events, cultures, social issues, or everyday life with the aim of telling a factual story. These images tend to be literal and straightforward, presenting an unfiltered and unambiguous view of the subject matter. We might consider the documentary photographer as a visual journalist conveying information and narratives.

If documentary photography tells “stories,” then post-documentary photography creates “allegories.” Allegories are veiled or figurative narratives that ultimately address themes beyond their literal representations. Allegories can harbor multiple meanings and interpretations, but it typically falls to the viewer to discern them.

If documentary photography tells “stories,” then post-documentary photography creates “allegories.”

A Post-Modern Photography?

The term “post-documentary” may remind you of the term “post-modernism.” There may be a connection.

Photography emerged in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, around the same time the modernist art movement came into being. A century later, in the mid-to-late 20th century, artists began reacting against the “grand narratives” and certainties of modernity. Art historians and theorists call this wave of “incredulity” post-modernism.⁸

The term “post-documentary photography” emerged in the late 20th century, coinciding with this broader suspicion of narratives and truth. Post-documentary photography shares this skepticism toward established narratives, “schools of thought,” and similar frameworks. And, as Tod Papageorge noted above, photographers and curators began seeing photography in this new “post-documentary” way back in the 1950s and 60s.

In this light, post-documentary photography might be a part of the larger postmodern condition. It goes far beyond just recording and documenting our world. It questions how we see it, challenging us to recognize the subjectivity and poetry inherent in visual representation.