The Photographic Vision/Visual Documents

The photograph as a visual document may be Victorian "snapshots" or cartes-de-visite, studies in motion by Muybridge, or Atget's Parisian street scenes. You will explore the photograph as document in your essay assignment for this week. This assignment has two parts: Select a photographer, perhaps Eugene Atget, Gordon Parks, August Sander, Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, Lewis Hine, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, or another, whose work demonstrates the concept of the photograph as a document. Choose specific examples of the photographer's work that you will write about in your essay. Write about the photographer and the examples of his or her work, answering these questions: When and where did the photographer make the images? For what purpose? Who was the intended audience? Using specific examples, explain how the photographs fit the definition of "document" as it applies to photography. After reading the articles concerning the validity of digital images, do we "read" visual documents differently today?