Social-Documentary Photography, Back in Context

Creased prints, poorly reproduced images, frayed publicity materials—not what one expects when one enters a fine-art gallery. “It is not a documentary image, but the documentary mode that we see here on journal pages and exhibition walls,” Maren Stange writes in her introduction to the catalogue for “Social Forces Visualized,” on view at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University.

Early last century, Jessica Tarbox Beals, Lewis Hine, Jacob Riis, and others defined social-documentary photography. “As a result,” co-curator Drew Sawyer explains, “many of their works are now in the collections of major art museums and most often viewed as autonomous aesthetic objects.” But these works were often commissioned by philanthropic organizations for their publicity campaigns, and the curators insisted on showing the photographs in their original contexts. “It is never the photograph alone that conveys meaning to viewers,” Stange writes. Each photograph is “anchored in a fixed relation to its caption, to an associated investigative text, and to an authoritative presenting agency.” Most of the material has never before been published or even publicly displayed.

In an event at the gallery on Saturday, at 4 P.M., the contemporary artists Martha Rosler, Trevor Paglen, and Lucy Raven will reflect on the role of documentary photography in their own art.

All courtesy Community Service Society Records, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.