Documentary Photography

The Irish painter Francis Bacon. 1978. By Eve Arnold.

Since I did not have an idea of documentary photography ready to hand, I had to think about it a bit. I tried to think around the problem by wondering what would not classify as documentary photography; things quickly got muddy. There are the photos that seem clearly to qualify as 'documentary photography,' like news photography or street photography, photographs with something apparently spontaneous about their production, capturing and documenting a moment in time. But then I wondered about photos that are staged but can still be said to be documenting something, such as portraits. Do those still count? Now, those clearly staged art photographs by people like Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall, those are definitely NOT documentary photography... but then I remember Jacques Rivette's line about every movie being a documentary of its own production and begin to wonder. So I split the difference: Here's a portrait of Francis Bacon in his studio, by Eve Arnold, which documents what he looked like, what he was wearing, where he sat, and the condition of his mirror on this day in 1978.