Documentary Photography Essay

Documentary photographs have the ability to both record and make history due to the duality of their purpose. Documentary photography first captures history when photographs are taken of major events. Those photos then have the ability to make history when they call the public to action, or bring attention to an issue that they were previously unaware of. Because of their capacity to not only document but also make history, documentary photography serves an important purpose within society. Documentation has been an important aspect of photography since its inception, allowing photographers to record history as it was taking place. For example, the Civil War was the first major American conflict documented through film. Michael L. Carlebach
In her essay “In, Around, and Afterthoughts”, Martha Rosler points out that, “Documentary, as we know it, carries (old information) about a group of powerless people to another group addressed as socially powerful (263). This statement is important to helping understand how documentary photos can make history. They are only able to do this when the images they express have enough power to call the audience to action to make a change. For example, in Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s “Seeing the Disabled”, she describes the Breast Cancer Fund documenting women daringly showing off their mastectomy scars in a set of advertisements called “Obsessed with Breasts” that imitated sexualized images of women in advertisements and publications such as Victoria’s Secret catalogs and Cosmopolitan magazine. In turn, the advertisements created controversy and opened a dialogue about breast cancer and the reality of women’s breasts compared to the way they were normally portrayed in the media (Thomson 365-367). This is a time where a documentary image created history, because it changed the rhetoric surrounding mastectomies and breast cancer. This is just a small example of the history documentary photography can