Contemporary Documentary

mickyates Aftermath, Documentary, History, Ideas, Mick's Photo Blog, Narrative, Photography, Portrait, Reportage, Social Development Leave a Comment

This is a ‘Contemporary Documentary’ resource list, including many references that have influenced my work, for the University of Leeds COMM5805 Module. My project, ‘Unfinished Stories: From Genocide to Hope‘, is about the people that we have known for 20 years that survived the Cambodian / Khmer Rouge Genocide but who had previously never told their personal stories. It is by …

Allan Sekula – Fish Story, and Critical Realism

mickyates Art, ContextualResearch, Critical Research Journal, Critical Theory, Documentary, History, ICWeek12, Ideas, Informing Contexts, Landscape, Narrative, Photography 3 Comments

Allan Sekula was one of the most influential documentarians working in the late 20th Century. An incisive critic, he also was part of the re-imagining of documentary, moving photography (and art, generally) away from that rather ferocious and inward-looking absorption with identity that was postmodernism. His masterwork, Fish Story, reminds me of Susan Meiselas’ Kurdistan. Both used historical and contemporary …