Documentary and Fictional Photography
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Documentary and Fictional Photography
Introduction
Documentary images in photography are considered to be more powerful, as the viewers are seem to understand the truth in documentary images compared to fictional images. This is so because, the documentary truth is better understood as the truth found in the manner in which people arrange their perceptions mentally. Further adding to the theory in a documentary film causes people to be more aware of how messages in photography are read and less about the reality that the film speaks about. This is definitely the reason why documentaries have been used in the modern society to appeal to economies, so that they support humanitarian aid and even invoke fear in people using such a political strategy. Documentary photography has played such a key role in ensuring media around the world reports about real situations in different parts of the globe. It has been enhanced by the use of mobile phones as people tend to record videos of real issues, upload them to a bigger platform so that more people can access them, for instance through YouTube, thus entering and transforming imagination of individuals (Ellis, 1989).
Regardless of the fact that documentaries are just a strategy that is used in photography and filmography to ensure that the audience and the target viewers have been appealed to, they should also be appreciated for the excellent work they do in making photography and filmography a comprehensive text that can be decoded. Each story focusses on being able to tell the truth. Perception seeks to define the truth as being the way in which the world around us is defined, and imagery is sometimes applied to explain the relationship that the subject has with the image it is compared to. Fiction therefore tends to kick in as one tells a story whereby the imagery is exaggerated or even the imagination is explored too much, and the aspect of documentary photography is always involved. Further, as new digital technologies continue to emerge, the relationship there exists between the photographic image, and the time the image is conceived, Fictional photography continues to be advanced and the gap between the documentary and fictional photography continues to widen.
The last twenty years have seen the evolution of photography, such that it has made such a key contribution into the aspects of art and architecture. New technologies have been developed that have seen the reinvention of traditional photography to incorporate societal aspects of art, performance and even photography (Renov, 2004).
This paper focuses on the often highly mediated and ambiguous space that exists between fictional and documentary photography. The photographer whose photography pieces the paper is based on is one of John White in June of 1973. The specific photograph is named as the "Black youngsters cool off with fire hydrant water on Chicago’s South Side in the Woodlawn community", that is preserved at the National Archives and Records Administration collection Portrait of Black Chicago which is taken as part of a project by the Environmental Protection Agency dubbed DOCUMERICA.
Form and Content in documentary and fictional photography
A documentary film is characterized by what is referred to as the discourses of sobriety that touch on the aspects of science, politics, economics, and even politics such that they describe the truth of the matter in these fields. They further proceed to form the facts and the fictions about a given time or period, helping history to enhance its accounts in ways that can be considered to be more than obvious. It also goes beyond languages and adds a visual aspect to the written concepts of a given occurrence in history thus making it more comprehensible than historical sources of information.
Fictional films and photography is characterized by additional of extra information, exaggeration and use of technology to change the appearance of thing, to explore the imagination, as well as to entertain those looking into the photograph or film.
Audiences seem to appreciate the aesthetics associated with fictional pieces in photography. This is because fictional works mostly have an effect on the beliefs, thoughts and attitudes of its audiences and viewers. Regardless of the fact that documentary films contain plenty information, content and beauty, functionally, it is less preferred and even less appreciated as compared to its fictional counterpart. This type of photography also calls for the artists to be more than professionally skilled to be able to produce pieces that audiences would like and appreciate, it also calls for creativity of the artist and a type of personal style, and communicative connectedness with the audience for one to be said to be a good fictional photographer (Nichols, 1991).
Consequently, in fictional photography, the audience tends to appreciate the artist and the work they have done, as compared to a documentary piece of art where the audience would only appreciate the subject of the piece of art as the artists is only known to keep the cover of the piece. For one to appreciate the artist in documentary pieces, the art should be phenomenal and outstanding such that the piece has to please the eyes of the audience, as well as instruct their mind. The artwork in a documentary piece is only properly visible after the looking at the work that has already been done, while in fictional pieces, the artwork can be appreciated right from the conceptualization stage of art development.
By choosing to either do a documentary or a fictional piece of work, it is possible for the artist to either heighten or mask intent the piece was created to serve, as their classification already determines how people would look at the piece. To heighten the intent of the work, the artist simply makes it more appealing to the audience by adding a bit of extra information here and there to exaggerate or bring out false aspects of the picture or film, and thus makes it more interesting. If the intent of the photography was to be informative and educative, keeping it leaning towards the documentary side makes it more applicable to its targeted audience, and thus masks the wrong intentions and heightens the right intentions that the piece was created to serve (Godmilow & Shapiro, 1997).
Visual Strategies and message of work
In photography, the visual simply targets what can be seen in the photographic piece that has been produced by a given artist. The experience that the piece gives its viewer by seeing or watching it, is only half the information that is inscribed in a piece of work that any artist has produced. The visual only serves to ensure that the ideas of the artist are brought home, and that the audience interacting with a photograph or film, can get to understand the artist better by using the id provided by the visual of either the film or the photograph.
Visual strategies refer to the strategies that the artist puts in place to ensure that the photography is easier for the viewer or the audience to decode, evaluate and interpret. The strategies are supposed to make the process of driving the message of the work home to the audience better and easier. The strategies include making the work more seductive, or whether or not to include a diegetic plan. The amount of information that the target audience of the piece has, as well as the emotional involvement of the audience re some of the strategies that are put in place to make sure that the message of the art work has been put across to the audience clearly, and that it has been efficiently decoded, evaluated and interpreted.
The mediums chosen to increase and strengthen the intent of the work focus on getting us to the inside of the photographers head as he was doing the piece. The pointers of key importance that help in strengthening the intent of the work between the photographer and the audience include the state of mind of the artist when he or she was doing the composition and putting the piece together, the exact moment that the artist seems to be trying to capture, the focal point and the setting of the surrounding of the film or picture that a give photographer is trying to capture (Suominen, 2004).
When considering the state of mind the photographer was in during composition, the positioning and decisions to choose what the photographer chooses to put in their shot is the most important aspect. The inclusions into the picture and the exclusions out of, as well as the reason they were chosen to be either included or excluded is one of those media that could speak volumes when it comes to strengthening or weakening the intent of the work. Further, even during editing, the fining of some aspects of the photo, as well the filters lighting and even cropping could be very useful in establishing the main intent of the work. In addition, considering the moment and the exact point at which the photo was taken could have a very detailed account of what the main business of the picture is and why it was take. A consideration of the things that transpired before and even after the phot was taken can even be looked into.
The aspect of the focal point, is that which describes where the photographer draws the attention of the audience in either the picture or the film. In most cases, it is easy to tell, as it is the main focus of the photography at any given point. It can be distracted by playing around with light, it is almost always the main subject of a photograph. Further, the photographer seems to have deliberately chosen the focal point that they have as it takes focussing and even use of technology to edit the picture, so that the main subject of the picture or the fil is easily identifiable. Looking at the setting of the photo to establish whether or not it is as a result of circumstance or even as a result of a conscious decision could also be taken as a medium that can be chosen to tell whether or not strengthen the intent of the photograph or the film. It is important for the audience to be able to distinguish whether or not the photo was taken as a result of circumstance, as in when events were happening as in the case of photojournalists, or whether the shot had been deliberated or even scheduled (Cordell, 2015).
Re-evaluating Visual Literacy
Visual literacy simply considers the thoughtful interpretation of a picture successfully. Photographs can be very easy to read and very difficult to read as well making it easier for people to communicate through photography, while at the same time, making it equally hard for people to misinterpret phots and thus risk miscommunication. By reading and communication through pictures and videos, one out to be able to respond to photographic images by decoding them and even evaluating them.
In the same manner that the photographer or the artist decides on a number of things before making a decision, the audience also makes their own kinds of decisions so as to decode, evaluate and interpret the photos that they are viewing. Some of the specific concepts of the photos that an individual has to interpret include the context of the photograph, the surrounding and environment of the incident in the picture or film, the reason why the photo was taken, when and where it was taken, among many other factors (Templin, 1981).
While one is doing an interpretation of a photograph a number of issues are specifically looked into. First and foremost, there are small things in the photos that tell who or what is in the photo, when and where the photo was taken, and other almost obvious and that which can be easily collected from a mere look at the picture. Information of this sort is referred to as explicit context of the picture. On the other hand, the implicit context is the information that the photographers put clues about and merely implies, and the information is seen but it is not clear. Implicit information could also be left out by the photographer, so that what has been obtained can be inferred but it is not crystal clear.
A photographic image that is filled with information that implies an implicit concept pushes the audience to focus on making assumptions so as to be able to decode, evaluate and interpret the image. The assumptions that the audience tend to make are only related to the experiences that they themselves have gone through and thus is a very biased way of visual literacy. While making the assumptions, the audience has no clue that it is doing so, as the assumptions are made in the subconscious state of mind. Implicit and explicit contexts are also not always clear presenting a problem of different states in the visual language avenue between the viewer and the photographer. For the right assumptions and inferences in terms of visual literacy calls for a common ground between the photographer and the audience in terms of visual language as in clues, signs and assumptions. (Thibault, & Walbert, 2006)

References
Godmilow, J., & Shapiro, A. L. (1997). How real is the reality in documentary film?. History and Theory, 80-101.
Ellis, J. C. (1989). The Documentary Idea: A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. Prentice Hall.
Thibault, M., & Walbert, D. (2006). Reading Photographs.
Renov, M. (2004). The subject of documentary (Vol. 16). U of Minnesota Press.
Nichols, B. (1991). Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary (Vol. 681). Indiana University Press.
Cordell, D. M. (2015). Using Images to Teach Critical Thinking Skills: Visual Literacy and Digital Photography. ABC-CLIO.
Templin, P. A. (1981). Handbook in Evaluating with Photography.
Suominen, A. (2004). Writing with photographs, re-constructing self: An arts-based autoethnographic inquiry (Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University).