The Psychology Behind Photography: The Documentary Impulse by Stuart Franklin Published by Phaidon 1
Award-winning photographer Stuart Franklin explores the philosophy and psychology behind photojournalism, war photography and cultural documentation in The Documentary Impulse, published by Phaidon on 11 April.
Stuart Franklin took one of the most powerful photographs of the 20th century – the 'tank man' in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989. Here he questions why we are driven to visually document our experiences and the world around us.
Franklin writes: ‘This book traces what I shall call the documentary impulse. Here I mean the passion to record, with fidelity, the moments we experience and wish to preserve, the things we witness and might want to reform; or simply the people, places or things we find remarkable ... Photography (and journalism) practised respectfully has the power to educate us all towards a greater understanding and empathy towards others.’
Locating the documentary impulse in the earliest forms of self-representation – cave paintings – and through the history of art, Franklin explores how the power to tell stories drives documentary forms of expression.
He examines photography of the everyday, apparently mundane and surreal – with personal stories like that of drug addict and mother Julie Baird in the 1990s and Josef Sudek’s lifelong documentation of the tree outside his window. Through examples of some of the most significant events of the last hundred years – including the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, apartheid, the Vietnam War, famine in Sudan and the first Gulf War – Franklin identifies some of the driving impulses of photography used in the media. These include curiosity, outrage, reform and ritual; the search for evidence, beauty and therapy; and the immortalisation of memory. He also considers photographic staging and the idea that the future of the genre may lie in the search for truth over fact.
The book features a wide range of photographers, including the concerned lens of Don McCullin and James Nachtwey, the surreal street photography of Eugène Atget and Sibylle Bergemann, the colour-saturated work of Martin Parr, and staged scenes of Gregory Crewdson.
Stuart Franklin The Documentary Impulse is published by Phaidon on 11 April 2016
Hardback £19.95 | 45 colour and b&w illustrations | 203 x 137 mm | ISBN 978 0 7148 7067 0
