{"id":450,"date":"2020-04-28T19:05:15","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T18:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mposborne.com\/?p=450"},"modified":"2020-04-28T19:05:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T18:05:15","slug":"is-documentary-photography-exploitative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/2020\/04\/28\/is-documentary-photography-exploitative\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Documentary Photography Exploitative?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following essay I completed as part of my MA unit ‘Writing Criticism: Critical and Analytical Frameworks<\/em>‘. This was a critical writing essay on a topic of our own choice, and our first major essay of the MA. I chose to write about documentary photography and got 83\/100 which I was pretty pleased with. Naturally, since this was written I have read and researched a lot more, and have found there are a lot of things that I would do differently, as well as choose different case studies. This is pretty much as it was handed in, except for the formatting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Is Documentary Photography Exploitative?<\/h2>\n

This work will discuss how documentary photography explores social issues through their aesthetic display and critical reception, and if this reception can cause notions of exploitation in the subjects photographed for the images to have a critical impact. To do this I will refer to underlying theories from photography critics such as Martha Rosler, Susan Sontag, Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Hal Foster, and how they discuss the critical reception of documentary photography and the underlying theories.<\/p>\n

I will look at images from two case studies: Martin Parr\u2019s Last Resort<\/em> (1983-85) and Diane Arbus\u2019 Untitled<\/em> (1970) and discuss them through semiotic analysis based on the theories of Roland Barthes, and how this relates to the aesthetics of the photograph. As a practising documentary photographer, I will use my positionality and experience to see how my own views align or oppose contemporary critical reviews on the reception of the case studies. I will use the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s theory of habitus and how this relates to both the photographer and in the viewer.<\/p>\n

I will see if there is a link with the critical reception of the images with their aesthetics, taking into consideration cultural memory, and situate the case studies socially, historically and geographically. Also, I will critique the idea of the \u2018artist as ethnographer\u2019 and how important it is for the artist\/photographer to record different cultures and identities. Further to this, I will look at the way they go about this, either as a detached observer based on the ideas of Baudelaire\u2019s Fl\u00e2neur,<\/em> or if photographing from either inside or outside the culture, does what they are documenting have a greater impact without any notions of exploitation.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019ll discuss issues that arise from documentary photography. If the photographer has a moral duty to be sympathetic in what they\u2019ve chosen to photograph, should this be weighed against the critical and aesthetic considerations. I will also look at any solutions that photographers could use to approach subjects without causing offense.<\/p>\n

Aesthetics of Documentary Photography<\/h2>\n

\u2018The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed\u2019 (Sontag 1977).<\/p>\n

Critic and essayist Susan Sontag\u2019s idea that the camera can free the photographer from responsibility is both acutely observant but also morally questionable. On one hand, photographers do have a duty to record everyday events, to bring light to those in the shadows of society and to make aware those that are marginalised or otherwise \u2018outside\u2019 mainstream society. On the other, it questions the photographer\u2019s responsibility in how they go about this. I feel it\u2019s important to ensure the subjects that are photographed are not exploited under the auspices of showing their plight in a way that could hinder, rather than help, calls into question the usefulness of documentary photography. As Martha Rosler writes: \u2018Documentary, as we know it, carries (old) information about a group of powerless people to another group addressed as socially powerful\u2019 (Rosler 1981). It is this problem where exploitation can arise, in the balance of power between the photographer and subject, and also in the role the viewer plays. If the photographer is producing work for a specific audience, who is this audience and are they able to receive and understand the work based on the aesthetics of the image?<\/p>\n

It could be argued that powerful images can get across a specific point of view or narrative, but this is often to the detriment of the subject in the image in a way that is hidden behind an aesthetic beauty. As Walter Benjamin stated: \u2018[Photography] has succeeded in turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment\u2019 (Benjamin 1970). This is one of the problems with photography in a capitalist society. Photography has a worth which is linked to the aesthetic value of the image, not the social value of the subject or what the photograph represents. Sontag used an example of Lewis Hines\u2019 photographs of children working in American cotton mills at the turn of the century (figure 1). These photographs did bring about a change prohibiting child labour, but over 100 years later, to a contemporary audience the \u2018lovely composition and elegant perspective [\u2026] outlast the relevance of their subject matter\u2019 (Sontag 1979). Just because the original issues that were bought up by the photograph were dealt with, does this mean all that is left for the photograph is one of aesthetic beauty. It has become \u2018art\u2019 and sold as such or should there still be some humility reserved for a historic document, and the ability to reframe it in a contemporary context?<\/p>\n

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Figure 1. (Hine 1908)<\/p>\n

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the mainstay of documentary photography such as Lewis Hine\u2019s was to show the middle classes how the working classes \u2013 or \u2018other\u2019 social groups seen as \u2018inferior\u2019 – lived and worked in an effort for social reform. These moral questions gave documentary photography the power to cause distress to those who saw the images, which in turn may induce sympathy with the subject. The more powerful the image, the more people would be shocked and resulting in action being taken. However, the nature of a photograph removes the viewer from experiencing what they are seeing, presenting a sanitized version of reality, particularly in the case of Hind\u2019s images, ones that are beautifully lit and composed. \u2018Photographs can and do distress. But the aestheticizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it\u2019 (Sontag 1979). This presents a conflict for documentary photographers. To create work that can sensitively tackle a subject without showing them in a way that doesn\u2019t exploit them, or one that doesn\u2019t aestheticise in order to get across the artists\u2019 intent.<\/p>\n

An important part of the reception of a photograph comes from the viewer. How they interpret the photograph shows how successful the photographer was in getting across their intention for photographing that subject. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu popularised the term \u2018habitus\u2019 which relates to how different sections of society receive and understand images, based on upbringing, class, social status and education. This is to say certain groups of people may receive and understand photographs differently from others and find them exploitative based on their own life experiences, and looking at the aesthetics, confirms or opposes their critical reception of the image. As John Berger wrote, \u2018Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality\u2019 (Berger 2013). When a person looks at a photograph, they are more inclined to find the photograph aesthetically pleasing and therefore critically agreeable if the photograph conforms to their own view of reality or their habitus.<\/p>\n

Case studies<\/h2>\n

Diane Arbus was an American photographer working in New York in the 1960\u2019s. She became famous for her hard-line approach to documentary photography and purposefully set out to photograph social groups that were not often photographed or documented, such as nudists, circus performers, dwarfs, LGBT+ communities and strippers. Those who, in 1960s New York, were considered outcasts of society. This did and still does produce a mix of criticisms when responding to her work. As critic Gerry Badger writes, \u2018The very potency of her images, their dangerous, disturbing allure, demands an almost instantaneous moral judgment on the part of the viewer\u2019 (Badger 1988). This sums up Arbus\u2019s work. It draws people to study them, even if it\u2019s uncomfortable, who then produce a judgment based on their habitus. If their tastes and values align with how they receive and understand the images, they would find them more acceptable. Many people in 1960\u2019s New York would have a habitus that would mean their daily social interactions would not bring them into contact with the people Arbus routinely photographed and may not have understood her intent, finding her images shocking. As society has become more accepting of people on the fringes of society, her images are now viewed in a more inclusive social context, but one that people find historically exploited the subjects.<\/p>\n

As a photographer myself, I find some of Arbus\u2019s work disturbing as they are far removed from what I would be happy photographing. At the same time, I can understand the rationale behind some of her photographs, to me they come across as very truthful and observant. It is important to study her images and understand why Arbus has taken them, or at least be able to make an informed decision. As Arbus said in the Aperture Monographs:<\/p>\n

\u2018Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw\u2019 (Arbus 1972).<\/p>\n

Arbus\u2019s style of photographing people was to catch them with their guard down, to photograph them as naturalistically as possible. Viewers of these pictures may consider these unpleasant images. I believe this type of negative criticism to her work stems from an empathy from people taking offence to how they would feel in a similar situation. This reminds me of a contemporary photographer who has also received a lot of criticism for the way he\u2019s treated his subject matter, Bruce Gilden. He, like Arbus, documents everyday people on the street in uncompromising and often unflattering garish, portraits (figure 2). People don\u2019t find these images aesthetically pleasing, and from this have built up a negative criticism, calling them exploitative and de-humanising. As critic Sean O\u2019Hagen commented: \u2018His style seems to work against any intention to humanise his subjects. [\u2026] their perceived ugliness is paraded as a kind of latter-day freak show\u2019 (O\u2019Hagen 2015). I have to agree with O\u2019Hagen, and find the images quite disturbing and not sympathetic to the subjects. Both Gilden and Arbus\u2019s pictures strike a dissidence with people in how photography should flatter, producing negative criticism from the overall aesthetics and treatment of the subjects in the photograph.<\/p>\n

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Figure 2. (Gilden 2013) \u00a9 Bruce Gilden<\/span><\/p>\n

From 1969, Arbus visited residences in New Jersey for the developmentally and intellectually disabled. It was here she worked on what was to become her last project, Untitled<\/em>. The images in Untitled<\/em> show a departure from Arbus\u2019s usual style of photography where she was often upfront and occasionally aggressive in her treatment of her subjects, to one where she has taken a step back to observe what is happening, producing a softer image.<\/p>\n

Because of the change in how Arbus approached the aesthetics of the images in the Untitled<\/em> series, it produced very haunting and mysterious images that distanced her from the subject. Arbus\u2019s pictures were very different to similar works produced by photographers such as Richard Avedon, who photographed inside the East Louisiana Mental Hospital in 1963 (figure 3). These images are very hard-hitting and do strike an empathy with the subjects who are clearly in an institution. One also has to wonder why these photographs were taken, and for what purpose it serves the people in them. It is interesting that there isn\u2019t there more criticism against Avedon for his images compared to Arbus\u2019s images that appear much more sympathetic towards her subject.<\/p>\n

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Figure 3. (Avedon 1963) \u00a9 Richard Avedon Foundation<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 4. (Arbus 1970) \u00a9 Diane Arbus Estate<\/span><\/p>\n

Arbus\u2019s images were taken outdoors, free from any institutional setting and were of unrestrained patients shown happy and playing, just being themselves. In her approach and treatment of her subjects at the institution, I think Arbus treats them compassionately and honestly.<\/p>\n

Looking at figure 4, we see a black and white photograph of three girls playing outside on the grass in what could be a park or large garden. The background is uncluttered, with a row of trees and a parked car in the distance. One girl appears to be about to do a forward roll, watched by a girl in a swimsuit on the left. On the right, is another girl in a dress, with her head back in laughter. Next to her on the grass is a box with a ribbon, which could signify that this is someone\u2019s birthday. This doesn\u2019t look like a picture taken in a hospital for a marginalized group of people, and that\u2019s where I believe Arbus\u2019s skill as a humanist photographer shows though, allowing her subjects to act normally. O\u2019Hagan writes she is only a humanist \u2018if your view of humanity is essentially pessimistic and tinged with neurotic narcissism.\u2019 (O\u2019Hagan 2011). I do not agree with O\u2019Hagen, as I think Arbus has normalised them into being three girls playing, no different to any other three girls playing outside.<\/p>\n

\u2018Arbus was used to guiding her subjects, [\u2026] But now, with the \u201cUntitled<\/em>\u201d pictures, she faced people who would not respond to direction. They just were \u2014 and she watched them be\u2019 (Lubow 2018).<\/p>\n

The issue people took with the Untitled<\/em> images wasn\u2019t because Arbus was a middle-class outsider, or that she wasn\u2019t sympathetic to her subjects, but that the subjects did not have the mental ability to refuse or decline their pictures being taken. By photographing them in order to normalise them in society, Arbus unintentionally ends up \u2018othering\u2019 them by singling them out as different, making them appear more marginalised. Sontag said Aubus\u2019s images were \u2018based on distance, on privilege, on a feeling that what the viewer is asked to look at is really other\u2019 (Sontag 1979). As art critic Hal Foster writes, othering the subject \u2018confirms rather than closing the gap between the two through a reductive, idealistic or otherwise misbegotten representation\u2019 (Foster 1996). It is a complicated interplay of subject and photographer, who can produce work that can represent a specific community, but by doing so doesn\u2019t go too far in highlighting the differences. The most ideal way to do this is to photograph from the inside \u2013 to understand and know the subjects in order to break down stereotypes and show sympathy. However, this is not always easy to do with some subjects, especially those within an institution as Arbus was photographing, so the photographer would always be \u2018outside\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Figure 5. (Arbus 1970) \u00a9 Diane Arbus Estate<\/span><\/p>\n

Photographing from the \u2018outside\u2019, as Abigail Soloman-Godeau comments: \u2018As with Arbus\u2019s photographs of freaks and deviants, the risk is that the subject \u2013 irrespective of the photographer\u2019s intent \u2013 becomes object and spectacle\u2019 (Soloman-Godeau 1994). Arbus was from a middle-class Manhattan family, so for her to focus on the outcasts of society does initially suggest an undercurrent of exploitation in photographing these people. This can make the images more difficult to view, in much the same way as do Avedon\u2019s images of patients in institutions. Alice Correia argues that artists should be \u2018maintaining a distinction between themselves and their subject matter\u2019 (Correia 2006) although this distinction possibly only goes to reinforce the differences and the distance between social hierarchies.<\/p>\n

This distance isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing as the middle-class Lewis Hine managed successfully to highlight child labour and bring reform while also being sympathetic to his subjects. In 1960\u2019s America, conditions like Down Syndrome, which the three girls in figure 4 appear to have, was considered a mental illness and people with these conditions were often institutionalised. It may be the treatment of these people that contemporary viewers now find offensive, and a similar criticism would be levelled at any photographer in the same position.<\/p>\n

Figure 5 shows two girls, standing arm in arm, happy and smiling and well-dressed. Both are wearing large bonnets which don\u2019t seem to match their outfits. One of the girls has a handbag and her stockings rolled down below her knees. They both have Downs Syndrome, but I feel that looking at the photograph there is an air of discomfort and I question why the photograph was taken. In the early 1970\u2019s I can understand why people found this photograph exploitative given the subject matter. The photograph is obviously posed, even if marginally in order to get them to face the camera. Their eye level is above ours as viewer, which does suggest there is some thought into how Arbus went about photographing and representing them.<\/p>\n

Arbus\u2019s photographic aesthetic came from her use of a Rolliflex camera, producing square format images with black and white film \u2013 the standard for documentarians such as Arbus in the 1960\u2019s. The Rolliflex allowed her to photograph from a lower level than eye-level cameras. This has the effect of lowering our position of viewer to the subject. Raising it to eye level would imply a dominant viewer, lowering it to show a dominant subject. Nearly all her subjects, from middle-class New Yorkers, to the people in Untitled<\/em> have been photographed in the same way. As Frederick Gross explains:<\/p>\n

\u2018By photographing both \u2018freaks\u2019 and \u2018normals\u2019 in the same format, Arbus sought to eliminate the invisible boundary between traditional representations of the white, middle-class Protestant and the \u2018other,\u2019 and to depict the fragmentation of identity,\u2019 (Gross in Palumbo 2018).<\/p>\n

This way of photographing everyone equally I believe reinforces Arbus\u2019s view in trying to show people as they are. Susan Sontag, writing eight years after Arbus\u2019s death, was very scathing in her commentary of Arbus\u2019s work and may be the prime mover in the universal negative critique of it in the following years. \u2018In photographing dwarfs, you don\u2019t get majesty and beauty, you get dwarfs\u2019 (Sontag 1979). This criticism was aimed at Arbus\u2019s intention of photographing marginalised groups, and I feel that this is more a sweeping statement against the aesthetics of Arbus\u2019s work, rather than a rounded critique looking deeper into the motives behind her work.<\/p>\n

Revisiting her work forty years later, in a more open, inclusive, contemporary society, I feel the images can be seen in a more balanced way. Sontag may not have understood the ideas behind the images. Arbus\u2019s daughter kept a lot of her work under wraps until the mid-90\u2019s, which if seen earlier may have informed people differently as to her intentions, rather than them creating an opinion based on half the evidence. Arbus was an outsider, but to my view, one that photographed empathetically, making sure that the subjects in Untitled<\/em> were treated with respect.<\/p>\n

Like Diane Arbus, British photographer Martin Parr has also been criticized for the subjects he\u2019s photographed, notably a series of images of New Brighton. New Brighton is a holiday resort near Liverpool that he took as part of his work The Last Resort<\/em> (1985), his first major project shot in colour. Parr, like Arbus, is from a middle-class background and had chosen to document the working classes who took their holidays at New Brighton. The main criticism levelled at his work when it was first displayed in the 1980\u2019s was that his subject \u2013 the British working class \u2013 were being exploited under the banner of photographic art. Critic David Lee wrote at the time they were first exhibited:<\/p>\n

\u2018[Parr] has habitually discovered visitors at their worst, [\u2026] Our historic working class, normally dealt with generously by documentary photographers, becomes a sitting duck for a more sophisticated audience. They appear fat, simple, styleless, tediously conformist and unable to assert any individual identity.\u2019 (Lee in Badger, 2010).<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s criticism is that Parr, as a middle-class photographer, should be more sympathetic to the working classes and the pictures he produced are for a middle-class audience to poke fun at, in a way exploiting the working-class way of life. Parr\u2019s work has always had an air of humour within it, looking at the idiosyncrasies of British life. However, it was the aesthetics of the photographs showing the conditions that were acceptable for a seaside holiday for certain members of society that people took offence too. Lee\u2019s criticism plays down the values of Parr\u2019s work, saying that a sophisticated audience would find the images essentially boring, painting everyone with the same brush, unable to show any individualism. I disagree with Lee\u2019s criticism, and do see individualism in the people shown, feeling they have been treated sympathetically. I am viewing the images over 30 years later as a photographer with a different habitus to Lee, and I live near traditional seaside resorts so have had first-hand experience in them not looking how people imagine they should.<\/p>\n

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Figure 6. (Parr 1985 a) \u00a9 Martin Parr\/Magnum Photos<\/span><\/p>\n

Figure 6 shows a young family eating fish and chips next to an overflowing waste-bin with discarded fish and chips scattered around on the floor. The couple seem oblivious to Parr\u2019s presence, but what many people would have found shocking, even today, was their surroundings. This is not a traditionally aesthetically pleasing photograph of a seaside holiday. The way Parr has composed and shot this image puts the rubbish as the focus of the picture, lit by Parr\u2019s signature flash producing an overly saturated, hyper-real image. The young family are secondary to the rubbish, but the semiotics of the image could read that New Brighton is a trashy destination that people wouldn\u2019t be proud to be seen in. A white 1930\u2019s building with the word \u2018Palace\u2019 on the front hints at a former grandeur. The white bag slung around the pushchair that is standing on the discarded white chip wrappers and polystyrene trays, mirrors the white rubbish bags overflowing in the bin. There isn\u2019t much to separate the rubbish from the couple\u2019s own belongings.<\/p>\n

People would not usually want to sit surrounded by rubbish, but as Olivia Singer wrote; \u2018It was the truth of their lives that seemed to shock the capital\u2019s art scene, more accustomed to the established divisions that eighties Conservatism bred’ (Singer 2015). On the face of it, people disliked Parr\u2019s photographs and called them exploitative because what they saw did not conform to their own expectations of how the working classes holidayed. People in Britain have a cultural memory for visiting the seaside, which usually aligns to a specific stereotype of sandy beaches and ice cream. Parr\u2019s photos of New Brighton shatter these stereotypes, showing not an ideal holiday, but the harsh reality of what a seaside holiday could be. As Robert Morris remarked; \u2018This is a clammy, claustrophobic nightmare world where people lie knee-deep in chip papers, swim in polluted black pools, and stare at a bleak horizon of urban dereliction\u2019 (Morris in Singer 2015) (figure 7). This may have looked like a nightmare, but to many people this was their reality. It was the prejudice of Morris in 1986 who, like many other critics was unaware or unable to accept that this was normal to many working-class people.<\/p>\n

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Figure 7 (Parr 1985 b) \u00a9 Martin Parr\/Magnum Photos<\/span><\/p>\n

Parr just took pictures of what he saw, in much the same way that Diane Arbus did. They were not staged, just observed. Re-viewing the images in a contemporary context, where the social classes have softened and the harshness of 1980\u2019s Thatcherism has faded, Parr\u2019s photos can be seen in a new light as an important body of work that didn\u2019t try to be overly critical of the working classes, just truthful. As Elisabeth Mahoney wrote over twenty years later from Parr\u2019s first exhibits, \u2018now they look humorously engaged and fond, bringing British working-class nook and crannies into view, and reminding us how unusual that was (and is) in art photography\u2019 (Mahoney 2008). Parr\u2019s work ended up becoming an important project that was uncompromising in its subject matter. This shocked many when they first saw it as it did not sit within their habitus, as their tastes and values didn\u2019t align with the ideals of the project so finding it offensive and exploitive. I do not see Parr\u2019s work as exploitative to the people in them in the same way that Hine\u2019s images of working children were not exploitative. They do what documentary photography should do, and that is to highlight all aspects of society in a truthful, sympathetic way.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Artist as Ethnographer\u2019<\/h2>\n

Art critic Hal Foster formulated the term \u2018Artist as Ethnographer\u2019 to situate the artist within an updated social and political model based on Walter Benjamin\u2019s 1970 essay Author as Producer<\/em>. Foster\u2019s argument is that since the 1960\u2019s there has been a shift from \u2018a subject defined in terms of economic relation to one defined in terms of cultural identity\u2019 (Foster 1996). This is what Foster calls an \u2018ethnographic turn\u2019, placing art within the field of culture with the viewer of art becoming a social subject in themselves. This raised another problem with the artist becoming an \u2018ideological patron\u2019. The idea of the artist as an ideological patron is where a split in identity between the artist and the \u2018other\u2019 occurs, and the artist confirms the \u2018other\u2019 as different in attempting to show a specific reality, \u2018The cultural and\/or ethnic other in whose name the artist often struggles\u2019 (ibid). To paraphrase Foster, to avoid becoming an ideological patron, the artist should be aware of not only the discursive breadth of a subject, but also its historical depth, to understand the subject and document it objectively and compassionately (ibid). The artist should also be reflexive to avoid over-identification, which can also release them from being an ideological patron, or culturally arrogant. I agree with Fosters\u2019 interpretation of the artist as ethnographer, however Foster doesn\u2019t offer a concrete conclusion as neither the cultural politics on the left or right offer a complete solution, only that artists should occupy a middle ground, maintaining a critical distance from their subjects. Enough to allow them to observe and record impartially, but not too distant to reinforce stereotypes or become an ideological patron.<\/p>\n

It is this critical distance that I think both Parr and Arbus hold well. To my mind, neither of them appear to have an agenda in the treatment of the two case studies, and both did well not to stage their pictures in order to play to stereotypes. One must be mindful that Arbus did move some people into position in a few of her pictures where there are informal group shots (figure 5), but I don\u2019t think this harms the project. Where Parr and Arbus draw much of their criticism is from their elevated position as outsiders to the subject they are documenting. Critic Abigail Soloman-Godeau wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2018We frequently assume authenticity and truth to be located on the inside (the truth of the subject), and, at the same time, we routinely \u2013 culturally \u2013 locate and define objectivity (as in reportorial, journalistic, or juridical objectivity) in conditions of exteriority, of nonimplication\u2019 (Soloman-Godeau 1994).<\/p>\n

Soloman-Godeau\u2019s idea runs in parallel to Foster\u2019s idea, that there is a balance to be sought to avoid being too much on the inside to over-politicise the subject, but also being not so outside to reinforce the idea of ideological patron, or to exploit the subjects. One has to wonder, if Parr was a working-class photographer from Liverpool, would he have produced the same photographs, and would they have been received in a different way? I think perhaps not. The criticism of Parr\u2019s work was not just that he was a middle-class outsider, but also that the aesthetics of images he took were so remarkably different to anything that had gone before in British documentary photography.<\/p>\n

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Figure 8 (Parr 1975-79) \u00a9 Martin Parr<\/span><\/p>\n

The working classes are a subject that Parr had photographed before, notably \u2018The Non-Conformists<\/em>\u2019 that he photographed in Hebden Bridge between 1975 and 1979 (figure 8). These are black and white photos of Northern working-class life with Parr\u2019s acute eye for detail and humour apparent in them. Following in the vein of Chris Killip and Tony Ray Jones, both documentarians of the working classes in the 1960s and 1970\u2019s, Parr\u2019s work doesn\u2019t seem out of place. The Last Resort <\/em>was shot in colour with flash, resulting in very harsh, saturated almost hyper-real colour, marking a departure from \u2018traditional\u2019 documentary photography in the UK. As Olivia Singer comments,<\/p>\n

\u2018this true aesthetic of\u00a0observation, [\u2026] shocked those familiar with\u00a0a more glitzy, consumerist understanding of holidays; the chip-shop wrappers and cigarettes dangling from mouths at the rundown resorts seemingly at odds with what a holiday ought be\u2019 (Singer 2015).<\/p>\n

It appears that it was the shock of this new aesthetic, seeing in bright, garish colour, as well as having a pre-conceived idea of what a seaside holiday should look, were the contributing factors to the negative criticism. As theorist Jonathan Friday writes:<\/p>\n

\u2018To grasp the meaning of a documentary photograph [\u2026] requires understanding the intended connection between the images and actual events and states of affairs. In other words, to attend to a documentary photograph is to understand what is seen [\u2026] as an evidential illustration necessarily connected to a particular time, place and historical context\u2019 (Friday 2002).<\/p>\n

This misunderstanding as to the context of the photographs is evident and highlights the differences in cultures and habitus between those who viewed the work in Liverpool and London. As Parr himself explained:<\/p>\n

\u2018At the time, when I first showed it in Liverpool, no one batted an eyelid because everyone knew what New Brighton was like. And then when I showed them in London [at The Serpentine Gallery], there was all kinds of responses; people were somewhat shocked\u2019 (Parr in Singer 2015).<\/p>\n

Parr could be seen as Hal Foster\u2019s model of \u2018artist as ethnographer\u2019. He was documenting a specific culture of people in bright colour, highlighting an economic and social difference between people in the UK and how they holidayed. There is an uncomfortable realism about the photos, but this I think works in their favour. As Martha Rosler states; \u2018the force of documentary surely derives in part from the fact that the images might be more decisively unsettling than the arguments enveloping them\u2019 (Rosler 1981). Parr\u2019s images were certainly aesthetically unsettling, and this may have played into their critical reception based on people\u2019s habitus. But any arguments against them would have been moot once people understood that this was a reality. While they may not have had the social reform of Hine\u2019s images, they are now an important and valuable social document of 1980\u2019s British life.<\/p>\n

The way Parr and Arbus went about their work was primarily as observer. Though their wanderings they saw life as it was and documented it. Through this way of observing, I\u2019m reminded of Baudelaire\u2019s identification of the Fl\u00e2neur<\/em>, a 19th Century idea to describe a middle-class \u2018figure of privilege and leisure, with the time and money to amble around the city at will\u2019 (Elkin, 2016). Susan Sontag discussed the Fl\u00e2neur<\/em> in relation to photography saying:<\/p>\n

\u2018Photography first comes into its own as an extension of the eye of the middle-class fl\u00e2neur<\/em> [\u2026] The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitring, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes\u2019 (Sontag 1979).<\/p>\n

While Sontag\u2019s Fl\u00e2neur<\/em> seeks out more voyeuristic tendencies, writer Ian Sinclair brings the concept of the Fl\u00e2neur<\/em> more up to date: \u2018the born again fl\u00e2neur<\/em> is a stubborn creature, less interested in texture and fabric, eavesdropping on philosophical conversation pieces than noticing everything\u2019 (Sinclair in Seale 2005). While Baudelaire\u2019s Fl\u00e2neur<\/em> was more interested in subjectivity over mechanical objectivity, photography is now accepted as something that emulates the real rather than copying it. As Kirsten Seal writes: \u2018Easily reproduced and hence materially disposable, photographs are at once visual and physical dramatisations of the transience of everyday life\u2019 (Seal 2005). Given this view of photography is more in line with Baudelaire\u2019s initial description of the Fl\u00e2neur\u2019s<\/em> ephemerality towards the social sights they observed, I feel that to describe documentary photographers who are interested in observing the everyday social world as a Fl\u00e2neur<\/em> is an appropriate term. I would strongly suggest that Martin Parr and to an extent Diane Arbus could be described as a Fl\u00e2neur<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Documentary photography by its nature as an artistic outlet of observing and documenting the everyday will always have problems. The issue of the situation of the photographer in relation to the subject will always be the main point of contention, but criticism comes from the viewer, those who the work is meant for, and those who are supposed to receive and understand the photographer\u2019s intent. Critic and theorist John Berger wrote \u2018All photographs are ambiguous. All photographs have been taken out of a continuity\u2019 (Berger 2013). What the photographer experiences when they take a picture can never be replicated or understood wholly by the viewer, only what the photographer intends them to see. With his photographs of New Brighton, we\u2019ll never fully know if Parr chose the images he did for their impact or if they were chosen purely as interesting social spectacles. As Guy Debord states \u2018The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images\u2019 (Debord 1983). In this case, Parr could be seen as mediating thorough his images his own view on how a social class experience their holiday. This itself is subject to Parr\u2019s own habitus and how he sees himself as someone who should record this spectacle.<\/p>\n

The reception of the images is also subject to the habitus of the people viewing the work and if they find them aesthetically pleasing. I feel that aesthetically his images are very hard hitting. Parr was photographing a gritty reality that not many people saw, but doing so in a way to make people have a greater social understanding, and not to exploit them though notions of the \u2018other\u2019. \u2018Any photographer, no matter how much of a social critic – unless photographing something as desperate as war or utter social deprivation – must have affection for his or her theme, and it should show\u2019 (Badger 2010). I believe that in Parr\u2019s and Arbus\u2019s work, this affection for their subject does show though. They produced aesthetically striking work, that at the time both projects were unveiled, caused initial shock and criticism. Now, through a greater understanding and natural social development, both projects have become defining works in photographic history. Like with Lewis Hine\u2019s work, there is now a danger that the works move from being documents of social history into the aesthetic art world, with the motives and criticisms being reduced to footnotes, and the images being seen purely as capital.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Martha Rosler commented that \u2018Documentary photography has come to represent the social conscience of liberal sensibility presented in visual imagery\u2019 (Rosler 1981), as it often shows socially disadvantaged groups of people in order to appeal to the self-interest of the more privileged. Quite often, it is the photographers who are also classed as the privileged, which leads into the morally questionable motives behind why they are seeking out these groups and to what end photographing these groups will help them.<\/p>\n

Photographing these social groups from the \u2018outside\u2019, may unintentionally \u2018other\u2019 and disidentify with the subject, exploiting them to \u2018build up political solidarity through fantasmic fear and loathing\u2019 (Foster 1996). Photographing from the \u2018inside\u2019 has its own problems by overidentifying with the subject. Both ways are dealing with the problem of representing the \u2018other\u2019, \u2018where the analysis depends on notions of voyeurism and objectification, tourism and imperialism\u2019 (Solomon-Godeau 1994). One way documentary photographers could represent a subject in order not to \u2018other\u2019 them is by displacing them, focusing on aspects of representation. Parr could have taken a theoretical approach, for example just showing images of the conditions with the detritus and rubbish left by the people on holiday rather than people surrounded by rubbish. This could have its own set of problems such as misrepresentation, or not fully dealing with the subject.<\/p>\n

This may have produced an aesthetically different body of work, one that may not have had the shock value of the original but would have dispelled any notion of exploiting the working classes. A different approach may not have worked with Diane Arbus\u2019s Untitled<\/em> as it was specifically the people that were the subject. I maintain that by setting out to document a specific group of people, ones that in a contemporary society wouldn\u2019t be hidden away in an institution, Arbus did photograph them sympathetically, especially when compared to Avedon\u2019s similar body of work. As Avedon\u2019s images were taken very close-up to the patients, they appear very intrusive and much harder to look at. Unlike Avedon, Arbus manages to stay the right critical distance to not patronise or objectify the subject, to just let them be themselves. As Jerry Badger writes:<\/p>\n

\u2018All photography is potentially exploitative [\u2026]. The potential for misanthropy invariably thrives whenever one human being has power and control over another. The reality of photographic exploitation might be eradicated only in theory, in the practicable implausibility of subject\u2019s and photographer\u2019s aims coinciding exactly\u2019 (Badger 1988).<\/p>\n

Whether people find specific photos exploitative or not often falls back to their habitus, their own taste and values and cultural memory. As photographs such as those by Arbus and Parr become turning points in social and photographic history, like with Lewis Hine\u2019s images, they will be appreciated more for their aesthetics over their subject. Photographers do have a moral duty to be sympathetic, but this should come across in the treatment of their subjects before any aesthetic considerations, and it should be this treatment that critics judge, not purely the aesthetics.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Image References<\/h3>\n

ARBUS, D., 1970-71. Untitled (6) 1970-71, [online] available from: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/11\/15\/arts\/design\/diane-arbus-zwirner.html [accessed 3\/12\/19]<\/p>\n

ARBUS, D.,1970 Untitled #1, 1970. [online] available from: http:\/\/www.artnet.com\/artists\/diane-arbus\/untitled-1-aPZvh3RcMw8RkTFNY3v32Tw2 [accessed 3\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

AVEDON, R., 1963. Mental Institution #3, East Louisiana State Mental Hospital, Jackson, Louisiana, February 15, 1963 [online] available from: https:\/\/www.avedonfoundation.org\/the-work [accessed 4\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

GILDEN, B., 2013-14. Mandy [online] available from: https:\/\/www.brucegilden.com\/#\/black-country\/ [accessed 4\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

HINE, L., 1908. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [reproduction number LC-USZ62-11278] [online] available from https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/collection\/nclc\/item\/2018674894\/ [accessed 3\/12\/19]<\/p>\n

PARR, M.,(a) 1985 The Last Resort [online] available from: https:\/\/pro.magnumphotos.com\/image\/LON6979.html [accessed 4\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

PARR, M.,(b) 1985 The Last Resort [online] available from: https:\/\/pro.magnumphotos.com\/image\/LON6971.html [accessed 4\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

PARR, M., 1975-79 Mayor of Todmorden\u2019s inaugural banquet, Calderdale. [online] available from: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/gallery\/2015\/mar\/24\/martin-parr-the-non-conformists-compton-verney#img-4 [accessed 5\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h3>\n

ARBUS, D., 1972. Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph<\/em>, New York: Aperture<\/p>\n

BADGER, G., Notes from the Margin of Spoiled Identity \u2013 The Art of Diane Arbus<\/em> [online] Available from: http:\/\/www.gerrybadger.com\/notes-from-the-margin-of-spoiled-identity-the-art-of-diane-arbus\/ [accessed Oct 29, 2019].<\/p>\n

BADGER, G., 2010. The Pleasures of Good Photographs<\/em>. New York: Aperture<\/p>\n

BARTHES, R. and S. HEATH, 1977. Image, Music, Text: essays selected and translated by S Heath<\/em>. Fontana<\/p>\n

BARTHES, R. and R. HOWARD, 2000. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography<\/em>. London: Vintage<\/p>\n

BAUDELAIRE, C., 1986. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays<\/em>. Da Capo<\/p>\n

BENJAMIN, W., 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction<\/em>. London: Penguin<\/p>\n

BENJAMIN, W., 1970. The Author as Producer<\/em>. In New Left Review 1\/62 [online] available from https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/reference\/archive\/benjamin\/1970\/author-producer.htm [accessed 3\/12\/19]<\/p>\n

BERGER, J. and G. DYER, 2013. Understanding a Photograph<\/em>. London: Penguin Books<\/p>\n

CAMPION, D., 2017. End of the Pier: Martin Parr in New Brighton<\/em>. In: Darren Campion. [online] Available from: https:\/\/darrencampion.com\/2017\/05\/04\/end-of-the-pier-martin-parr-in-new-brighton\/ [accessed Oct 29, 2019].<\/p>\n

CORREIA, A., 2006 Interpreting Jeremy Deller\u2019s \u201cThe Battle of Orgreave\u201d<\/em> in Visual Culture in Britain 7(2):93-112<\/p>\n

DEBORD, G., 1983. Society of the Spectacle<\/em>. Detroit: Black and Red<\/p>\n

ELKIN, L., 2016. A tribute to female fl\u00e2neurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets<\/em>. [online] available from https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/cities\/2016\/jul\/29\/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets [accessed 2\/01\/20]<\/p>\n

FOSTER, H., 1996. The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: MIT<\/p>\n

FRIDAY, J., 2002. Aesthetics and Photography<\/em>. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd<\/p>\n

LUBOW, A., 2018. Arbus, Untitled and Unearthly<\/em> [online] available from: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/11\/15\/arts\/design\/diane-arbus-zwirner.html [accessed 29\/12\/19]<\/p>\n

O\u2019HAGEN, S., 2011. Diane Arbus: humanist or voyeur?<\/em> [online] available from: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2011\/jul\/26\/diane-arbus-photography-sideshow [ accessed 13\/11\/2019]<\/p>\n

O\u2019HAGEN, S., 2015. A latter-day freak show? Bruce Gilden’s extreme portraits are relentlessly cruel<\/em> [online] available from: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2015\/aug\/19\/bruce-gilden-face-street-portraits-photographs-book [accessed 4\/01\/2020]<\/p>\n

PALUMBO, J., 2018. Revisiting Diane Arbus’s Final and Most Controversial Series.<\/em> [online] Available from: https:\/\/www.artsy.net\/article\/artsy-editorial-revisiting-diane-arbuss-final-controversial-series [accessed 13\/11\/2019]<\/p>\n

ROSLER, M., 1981 In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography.<\/em> In 3 Works, Halifax, N.S.: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design<\/p>\n

SEALE, K., 2005. Eye-swiping London: Iain Sinclair, photography and the fl\u00e2neur<\/em>. Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London, 3(2),<\/p>\n

SINGER, O., 2015. Martin Parr on his Infamous Photo Series, The Last Resort<\/em> [online] Available from: https:\/\/www.anothermag.com\/art-photography\/8073\/martin-parrs-last-resort [accessed 29\/10\/2019].<\/p>\n

SOLOMON-GODEAU, A., 1994. Inside\/Out<\/em>. In: K. KIRK, ed. Public Information Desire, Disaster, Document. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, pp.49-61<\/p>\n

SONTAG, S., 1979. On Photography<\/em>. London: Penguin<\/p>\n

STURKIN, M. & CARTWRIGHT, L., 2009. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture<\/em>, 2nd Ed, Oxford.: Oxford. University Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following essay I completed as part of my MA unit ‘Writing Criticism: Critical and Analytical Frameworks‘. This was a critical writing essay on a topic of our own choice, and our first major essay of the MA. I chose to write about documentary photography and got 83\/100 which I was pretty pleased with. Naturally,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,69],"tags":[26,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,29],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-university","tag-aesthetics","tag-bruce-gilden","tag-critical-theory","tag-cultural-memory","tag-diane-arbus","tag-documentary-photography","tag-ethnography","tag-exploitation","tag-flaneur","tag-lewis-hine","tag-martin-parr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.mikeosbornecreative.co.uk\/2025\/mpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}