I read an interview of street photographer John Free on the Internet awhile back concerning the differences and challenges of documentary, photojournalism and street photography. I think what he said helped me to crystalize some of my thinking about my own work, interests and projects. Here is what he said:

“I think that the three most important and also difficult forms or types of photography, is social documentary, photojournalism and fine art street photography, which was called straight photography when I started. I think that the difference between them is rather simple to understand. In photojournalism, six photographs with captions might be required. Social documentary photography requires 25-50 photos, which are each supported by a caption or short story. In street photography, it all must be done with one photograph and with no caption to help explain what cannot be seen. No caption and no posing, make street photography the most difficult form of photography that I have ever been involved with.”

One thing though, when it comes to social documentary photography, I’m not sure you really need to have as many as 25-50 photographs supported by captions or a story for the work to be a successful and cohesive effort in conveying what the photographer had in mind. But let’s move on.

Wright Morris is one of my favorite photographers. Morris was a great writer and photographer who pioneered the concept of the “photo-text” in the 1940s, combining his photography with his writing to tell a story. His photo-text books included The Inhabitants, The Home Place and God’s Country and My People.

I am very interested in the photo-text idea and think I would like to give it a try. I have an ongoing project on doorways and a number of years ago I wrote an introduction for it.  I enjoyed doing that quite a bit and it was useful in helping me to better bring into focus my thinking about why the work was so important to me. And while I am thinking about other photographic projects that could have a written piece that accompanies the work, typically I have concentrated more on street related images that must stand on their own and tell their own story for me and the viewer. Reading Free’s comments makes me think what might be most interesting and rewarding would be coupling some written thoughts with individual photographs that must stand on their own. My feeling is that both the project and individual image work coupled with writings could go well in self-published monographs.

When I was instructing at Delaware Valley University and Temple University retirement programs I wanted the students to write about what they hoped to accomplish and then did, as well as what the work meant to them.  I felt this would help crystalize things, and writing about each picture would further help to tie their portfolios together. After seeing what the students accomplished, I was more than satisfied with my strategy and was convinced that writing could be a great tool in one’s photographic arsenal! Problem was I didn’t follow my own advice!

Now I hope to!

Hey it’s a new year! What do you think?

Stay well,

Michael