Photojournalism Research - Influencing Photographers

With any photo assignment it's advantageous to research existing photographers for the different conceptual approaches they employ. As the idea for this assignment was intended to be more social documentary than Photojournalism, then so were the photographers researched appropriate for this style of imagery. For this assignment I researched  the following image makers for inspiration and compositional concepts:



Bernd and Hilla Becher - The Bechers are advocates of New Objectivity, this is were the majority of subjectivity is removed and the composition is photographed in its true form. They are most famous for creating the typology - similar objects are presented in a grid system so subtle differences can be observed. The other thing they are renowned for is systemically capturing images of industrial establishments. They opened the way for any structure to be seen as artistic image making.

 

Paul Graham - 'A1- The Great North Road' was seen as a mile stone for British social documentary photography. Graham captured colour images which was a break from the black and white norm of the day. This was his first book that documented the 400 mile Great North Road from London to Edinburgh.  This book includes the harsh and mundane realities of the time, capturing fascinating images of everyday life along the entire length of this old established road.

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Mark Power - Much like Graham, Power uses a conceptual idea to explore social documentary imagery. This can be seen in his collection of photographers 'The Shipping Forecast'. Power explores the fascination that radio listeners have to the BBC Radio 4 program that provides the weather condition surrounding the British Isles. Listener are transported into a land of foreign sounding  names and areas that drive the imagination wild. He very cleverly used this audience imagination and went around Britain take images of what he found in the nautical areas. He followed this concept up in his book '26 Different Endings', The A -Z London Street Atlas. His concept was to follow the border of this published map taking imagery of what he found that had just fallen off the edge of the boundary line.

John Davies - Slightly different from the above photographers, Davies has a much broader concept for his chosen subject matter. Still preferring to use analogue techniques to modern digital equipment, his imagery is no less impressive. His book 'The British Landscape'  is a collection of black and white urban and natural landscapes  presented  with total clarity and definition from an elevated position.

 

Conclusion

These four artist have influenced both conceptual ideas through to photographic technique for the Photojournalism assignment. Not wanting to copy their methods directly I have taken bits from each to try and create a unique style.