Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
Interpretation
Documentary photography captures all aspects of life, and a good photograph serves as a valuable record of its subject.
Berenice Abbott emphasizes that documentary photography is an inclusive medium, capable of representing the full spectrum of human experience, whether positive, negative, or neutral. She suggests that a well-crafted photograph transcends mere imagery to become a significant document, reflecting the realities of its subject matter with authenticity and depth.
In practice
In a photography exhibition showcasing social issues, this quote could be used to emphasize the power of documentary images.
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
Photography helps people to see.
Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.
The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.
There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont' be afraid to take bad pictures... You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you've got a good one.
Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.
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