I. Introduction: Issues in Photodocumentary

Perhaps the most central claim of photography in its preeminence among the arts is its claim to represent or depict the empirical world most accurately, in astoundingly minute, objective, and documentary detail. The evolving tradition of documentary photography from its early roots to contemporary work thus raises issues fundamental to photography as a medium (its "realism", "objectivity", "faithful depiction", etc. versus "photography as art"). I believe this tradition/debate is best portrayed by examining the work of particular exemplary photographers. To illustrate this, I have chosen to examine the work of Nicholas Nixon, a contemporary American documentary photographer.

While this tradition is cited by various sources as having become diffused since the Second World War, I believe it lives on in various guises.

After The Americans [by Robert Frank], documentary photography entered the contemporary phase of its evolution... the best of recent documentarians have sought a middle path , walking out into the world--or a carefully chosen part of it--to record a strong personal view or to document an intensely personal experience. (Time-Life, 1983: 15)

I believe that Nicholas Nixon crosses these dichotomies in a quite wonderful synthesis which maintains the central photodocumentary tradition. I am left wondering at how adequately he address the concerns of postmodernism, caught in its infatuation with the endless possibilities of photomanipulation on the multimedia of the WEB? In this short paper, I seek to redefine some of these issues, linking claims, assumptions, and questions across some decades of photodocumentary, but especially regarding the integration of photographic technique and topical substance.

II. Some Historical Background:

Although one can cite various Europeans (e.g., Atget, Cartier-Bresson), documentary photography is in many ways a peculiarly American (liberal-democratic) tradition, which achieved a pristine moment during the 1930's, with the support of liberal governments seeking reforms (opposed to socialist solutions to destitution). Lange, Evans, Shan, Bourke-White and others painstakingly documented poverty in America, with extraordinary support from the progressive regime of Roosevelt, in return providing visual documentary support for the New Deal. The Library of Congress FSA files of some 50,000 classic FSA and OWI documents from the 1932-45 Roosevelt era are an incredible national resource, mostly of royalty free images, now available on-line.

Life magazine provided an equally elegant and much more popular forum for documentary photography's cousin, photojournalism. Life brought "the world" to a general audience, in retrospect a quite wonderful display of photography's ability to touch us all through its exquisite documentary accuracy.

As an exemplar, Evans represents the "classical" era of American documentary photography in the first half of this century, who attempted to use the medium literally to produce documents, supportive evidence, about the living conditions of ordinary people. He followed on many of these themes in his work for the FSA during the depression, documenting typical farm life conditions across the United States. Evans exemplifies one of the central ironies of the documentary tradition: by steadfastly abstaining from seeking aesthetic "beauty", and claiming to simply be recording everyday life, the corpus of the oeuvre of documentary photographers nonetheless has been criticized as highly ideological in its revelation of the "underside" of modern industrial society. Documenting all parts (the rich and the poor, the white and the black, the rural and urban, etc) of a society which itself ideologically proclaimed only the American dream was inevitably to challenge such stereotypical beliefs about ourselves: through its ethically committed approach to objectivism, documentary photography evoked political objections which suggested the limitations to claims of objectivity. Yet, contrarily, in his search for some objective reportorial truth, Evans also attained an almost austere formal, classical symbolism, absolutely exquisitely utilizing photography's merits as an artform!

III. A Contemporary Exemplar: Nicholas Nixon

In his work documenting "porch life" of neighbours in

a working class Boston neighbourhood during the seventies, followed by very intimate portrayals of his own wife and children (who become almost iconic figures), on through his portrayals of the aged and

AIDS victims--Nicholas Nixon is a contemporary "classic" American documentary photographer. In his portrayal of the "ordinary" and mundane, of ordinary people in their struggles and heroism and foibles, Nixon continues on in the tradition of Evans.

Almost without exception, Nixon's photographs entrap us with a disarming ordinariness: these are people we have all seen and known. Yet then the photos disturb us: if we thought we had seen and known--partly--well, now we see more, and realize we perhaps never really knew!

A large part of Nixon's entrapment is his use of the 8x10 camera and contact prints. There is a fine-grained tonality on the faces, the human flesh which is absolutely engaging: one wants to hug a crying child, or an AIDS victim--one wants to TOUCH the physicality of the persons portrayed: they are absolutely alive in the photos.

In this tactile physicality, there is also a "disturbing" eroticism.

The kids bask in the sun; the women are often grossly overweight (by Calvin Klein standards), yet attractive; the men vulnerable in their public revelation of chests and legs. The older ladies wince, yet attract. The races mingle and kiss. We feel we have intruded on a personal sensuality without full permission, even if the faces are smiling and welcoming. Perhaps this quality of intimacy, and distance marks the best of documentary photography.

The photos entrance us: each of Nixon's subjects has a story, and we want to hear it. The group photos, of course, often have subjects "talking to each other" as indicated by their glances. But most of them also interrogate the photographer (and through him, us!) incessantly! In their inquisitive looks, fright, and resistance to being photographed, there is a quite palpable tension.

The hungry kids (whether from Boston slums or Kentucky farms) stare--and stare--and haunt--and haunt!

This is almost pure Walker Evans!

And the photographs dig into our very beings: How can such fundamentally beautiful beings be in such abject conditions in such a rich America??

I strongly suspect part of this derives from Nixon's "approach" of confronting "folks" on the doorstep of "his" neighbourhood, and asking for a few minutes of their evening while he sets up (what must be to them a very weird) 8x10 box camera! The "invasion" is VERY palpable!

It is the large scale of Nick Nixon's purpose, not of his 8x 10 camera, that distinguishes him. He has taken on the hardest job of all--to convince us of the worth of our lives.....ways of understanding and respecting the world.,,...there it is--graffiti on the wall, people poor and tired, children sometimes alone, old age humiliating us... If sentimentality is, as Joyce remarked, "unearned emotion,", then Nixon tells us right away that he's not going to allow it; we're going to have to pay." With that established he tells us stories." (R. Adams, Introduction, Nixon, 1983: 5)

But in his use of formal procedures such as distorted images, and his portrayal of his own family members, his use of the 8x10 camera, Nixon breaks beyond naive claims to objectivity. The family portraits reveal not only his personal love of particular humans, but beyond that confirm his disarming revelation of his love of humanity. He literally takes his clothes off (and those of his wife and children).

In a sense, this might "reveal all"--as a tantalizing suggestion....

But (of course!) it doesn't! We do have a photographic record of many intimate moments with his wife and children (more naked and "exposed" than he has ever asked of other subjects), but we also then are confronted with the reality that the photographic image is (inevitably?) incomplete...that it never fully reveals the "full" story!

Nonetheless--the images are absolutely engagingly intimate...

Then, after entrancing us with his social concerns for poor kids we could all love, and his own family intimacy, Nixon hit us with "People with AIDS". This project relentlessly breaks down stereotypes and puts human faces on the victims of this plague. From the initial "healthy folks" photos, through the agonies of dying, and the impact on family, Nixon is absolutely superb in grabbing our emotions and sympathies. The dying eyes of "Tom Moran, Boston, Feb. 1988" (Nixon and Nixon, 1991: 21) HAUNT one...and haunt one.... and haunt....

"Nixon first came to prominence, it is germane to remember, as a photographer of large cityscapes, and he has more than once described his later pictures of people as involving, at least to a degree, "landscape problems' by which he means problems in linking components, human and otherwise, into a balanced whole." (Adams, p. 6, in Nixon, 1983.)

Nicholas Nixon is a photographer not only with excellent technical skills, but with a vision.

IV: Conclusion:

A cybernetic post-modernist world knit into "the WEB" is seen by many as fundamentally undermining the classic photodocumentary and ethnographic positions, challenging any and all claims of representation of empirical (social) reality by documentary photography at their very core! What does the technology leave, especially for "progressive" photographers, social researchers, and social activists committed to social issues (such as myself) seeking not only documentation of various issues, but some fulcrum for social change? And can documentary photography break beyond its fundamentally liberal-democratic American heritage!

In spite of these remaining questions, I believe that not a few documentary photographers have expanded our vision, such as Dorothea Lange, Margaret Burke-White, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Bill Owens--and Nicholas Nixon.

Through his mastery of some very "awkward" traditional approaches (the 8x10 box camera in particular), I believe Nixon has made a quite wonderful statement about the vibrancy of contemporary photography. The technical aspects of 8x10 make Photoshop alteration very difficult; the personal aspects are absolutely beyond alteration! While I cannot offer any suggestions breaking through his implicit classic American liberalism, I do admire his work wholeheartedly. In this work, he provides an inspiration, and a demonstrative declaration that photodocumentary lives!

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