When thinking about documentation my mind goes straight to a realistic representation of an event, culture, group of people and so on. Documentation and photography can share that element, and when combined they can create detailed images that invite the viewer into a world they might never get the chance to experience. With this, photography would can also be used to document their own lives, photographers like Nan Goldin use their camera to captures moments that she would otherwise be unable to remember.
Photography can be used to capture so many views of the world but documentary photography captures the most honest view. Although the photographer can still skew the vantage point and angles to ‘document’ something that looks better, or even worse, than the actuality of the situation. But I believe that documentation and documentary photography is extremely important in order for the public to educate themselves about the world around them, it forces them to see things they may have pushed aside in the past. Documentary photography can be as widespread as photojournalism all the way down to the everyday life captured in family photos, photos that document the the everyday for people to look back on and remember family members and events of the past.
there are endless uses for documentation in photography and even the simplest of images is documenting something. Every photo documents something.
Introduction To The Discipline F17 