Reportage Photographers I Chose For Inspiration
Reportage photography has been growing in popularity as a way of communicating, documenting and reporting events, stories, events and experiences. There are many photographers who explore this genre of photography both professionally and for themselves, including Martin Parr, Dennis Stock, Vivian Maier and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who can be described as “the Picasso of reportage photography.”
Before beginning the practical task for this brief, I have researched photographers for inspiration and to study their technics and what I emotionally respond to for viewing them.
Kevin Mullins
Kevin Mullins is a British reportage photographer who focuses on human interaction. He started documenting weddings, his first professional photographed wedding in 2008, and has shot over 450 weddings in his career. Mullins occasionally photographs births too, stating he finds caesarean births easier, saying “it was easier to understand the timings and there is a lot more control” during an interview. Mullins mostly uses Fujifilm and is an ambassador for Fujifilm.
I think Mullins achieves such an intimate feeling between those who view his photos and those in them by the focus, the original framing opportunities and the camera angle that is not at normal head-height for an adult. As a reportage photographer, Mullins seems to achieve the ‘fly on the wall’ perspective, which results in beautifully capturing organic moments. I like how the focus Mullins orchestrates and the shallow depth of field add to the intimacy, shown in some of the examples of his work I included below.
Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt was an American photographer (1913- 2009) who specialised in New York street and reportage photography. A lot of her photos are of children, either playing with other children or adults. This is most likely related to her teaching art to children in the mid- 1930s. Levitt wanted to do something creative but she didn’t feel talented in fine arts, saying she “could not draw well.”
Helen Levitt used a Voigtländer camera to take her photos, which was a revolutionary camera at the time and Levitt received it from her mother’s friend. She bought a Leica camera later, inspired by Cartier-Bresson, a pioneer of street photography whom she looked up too.
I think the innocence of the children is one of the main sources of intimacy in Levitt’s photos. I particularly like her subway series, where I think the intimacy of eye contact or touch combined with the setting of graffitied trains is a nice everyday juxtaposition.
Joshua K Jackson
Joshua K Jackson is a London street photographer who photographs the city and people in it. He describes the goal of his work as wanting to “illustrate the vibrancy of life in Central London, whilst also exploring themes of diversity and disparity” on his website.
Recently, he produced a specific series of reportage photography during President Donald Trump’s visit to London. I like how Jackson manages to create a personal and intimate feeling between the person viewing the image and the person in the image without a clear view of their face. In some, their faces is obscured by the shop’s open sign or the umbrella from the bird’s eye view perspective. In others there is mist, fog or the reflection keeping us from clearly seeing their face. I think it’s also fascinating how Jackson creates a feeling of intimacy with objects through the framing or minimalism, which I think is what draws me to his photographs. Differently than a lot of reportage photographers, Jackson uses images highly saturated with colour.
Primary Research; Roman Vishniac
On February 18th I went to The Photographer’s Gallery to see Roman Vishniac’s Rediscovered photography exhibition. Vishniac (1897-1990) was born in Russia, his work getting most publicity for documenting Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the interwar period. He moved to America in 1940 with his family. I found the exhibition very interesting, especially when I tried to consider these photos in terms of how Joe Elbert, assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post, ranks photographs in an hierarchy;
4. Informational
3. Graphic
2. Emotional
1.Intimate
The informational photographs cover the five W’s; who, what, when, where, why, but exist to add to the story, rather than in their own rights. Graphic photos add a visual interest to the photograph but emotional photos add an emotional connection, rather than an intellectual one. Intimate photographs,Kenneth Kobre writes in Photojournalism; The Professionals’ Approach (seventh edition, 2017), “these are the most private, the hardest to define…but they include pictures that make the reader feel close to the situation or in-tune with the subject.”
I felt that Vishniac’s 1933 photo above is informational, as there is a poster of Hitler in the background illustrating the time- or the when and what– the language of the words suggests the where and Vishniac’s daughter next to the posters show the who.
The two photographs above I would consider geographical, as the background plays and equal or greater significance than the figures. I especially like Ruins Of The Large Tropical Greenhouse, Berlin Botanical Garden (1947. Far right) as I think the patterns and composition are soothing to look at.
These four, I would categorise as emotional because there are strong emotive elements, especially the child on the bike with the monkey, and the people trying to integrate into their new lives and new societies after moving to America as Jewish refugees. However I didn’t feel a deep connection or intimacy with any of the people in the photos.
These seven photos are the ones I felt were the most intimate. I think the combination of the people in the photos for an empathetic human emotion combined with the skilled reportage photography ability to create an organic looking photo make the photographs look like moments stumbled across and not posed, forced or fake.
My Proposed Theme
I foresee the skill of being able to make feel people comfortable while they are being photographed will be quite challenging for me in this project. I struggle immensely with being able to make others feel comfortable, particularly when I first meet them and don’t know enough groups to be able to work with someone I do already know. However people often forget I’m in a room, which could be very useful in this situation. This added challenge makes it hard to chose a theme that is both plausible and has the most potential to work well. I outlined my main ideas below and later made a firm choice to develop.
- These are two photos I took on February 9th at Millennium Bridge with a Lumix Panasonic GH4 (DMC-GH4) and a 12-35 HD Lumix lens.
- Offices; particular of social workers as I find that a fascinating profession and I used to want to be a social worker. I think the main point of interest with this idea is how I hear a lot of people dislike the profession, sometimes saying quite awful things about those who do it, and I think that the concept of humanising the people who are social workers contrast the blind hate, which was particularly reported on a decade ago when there was a long running new story of a small boy who was killed by his parents. The main constrain of this is obviously getting permission to follow someone who is a social worker around while they’re at work. I think in terms of visual possibilities, it would be interesting to see whether a very structured and level background or a hand-held composition would look better and give a friendlier mood. In a way, the crooked background in some of Martin Parr’s photographs make the photo feel more intimate, rather than unprofessional, such as his beach scene photo or when the focus is on the background with a blurred foreground in his Weymouth photograph.
- Conversations In London; this was inspired after a classroom discussion on Brandon Stanton’s series Humans Of New York. My idea was to take photographs of people in London with a quote next to them of an overheard snippet of conversation. As someone who enjoys people-watching in public spaces, I often overhear conversations and phrases that sound observed out of context. One of my favourite things I’ve heard was in the Rothko room of Tate Modern and a woman asked her daughter of around four “how does this room make you feel?” and she replied “like a watermelon.” I think the interest to viewers would, like in Stanton’s work, the human element to a city so overcrowded individuals turn to faceless mass, as well as the curiosity of listening to other people’s conversations. The content may be hard to photograph, as to get an intimate photo of a stranger on the street or in a cafe may invade their personal space, however the two photos I took above were of strangers who wandered into the photos I was taking of the background. Given that London is the location for this project, I think the visual possibilities could be quite expansive. A way to make the series more coherent and connect could be to have each person in focus with a blurred background with a predominately blue colour to it, as London reminds me of the colour blue. Again, the natural and un-staged rules of reportage may prove highly challenging to this. I like how a lot of Stanton’s photographs follow a similar composition of the person being in one column of the rule of thirds, which is another way to connect the whole series together.
- There Are As Many Paintings As Those Who Look; this is inspired by the concept in art of there being as many versions of a painting as people who looked at it. I would quite like to go to an art gallery, like Tate Britain, and photograph people looking at art. I think Tate Britain in particular might be interesting as they have a collection of sculptures by Henry Moore, who I found out on my family tree is my first cousin four times removed (my great, great grandmother’s cousin). I think taking reportage photography in an art glazers opens up a lot of visual possibilities in terms on colour with art in the foreground and background, which could be blurred into pure colour.
Kerrie Portman 
