5 Documentary photographers who will change your life
Adam Broomberg And Oliver Chanarin
Known for:
Talking to the subjects, making them aware of what their work contemplates and getting to know their subject behind the superficial layer of preformed stereotypes.
Treating photographing as a very slow and meticulous process. Adam and Oliver‘s photography style references to 19th century photography in terms of process and style, going beyond the conventions of photojournalism.
Highlight: The Day Nobody Died (2008)
Quote: “People are given time to compose themselves. The fact that we're not looking through the lens but we're actually above, it looking at the subject and they are looking at us means there's a different relationship. There is a dialogue. The important thing is that we talk to people, we don't categories them and that's the big difference.”
Brenda Ann Kenneally
Known for:
Developing intimate portraits of the growing economical and social desperation in the US, intersecting personal and political into honest and poignant photographs.
Upstate Girls: Unravelling Collar City (2015) © Brenda Ann Kenneally
Observing the lives of her subjects on a long-term basis. Her latest one, 'Upstate Girls: Unravelling Collar City' Brenda documented her main subject for over 10 years. She claims to always go back to the people she has met to see how their life is developing. “When I stop it is as if my life with these people ends, I sort of never want that to happen.”
Highlight: Upstate Girls: Unravelling Collar City (2015)
Quote: “This kind of documentary work requires a kind of obsessive pathology and stamina. Also one must have a big empty space that allows for complete integration of life and work. Luckily for me I was born with this empty space. Some call it loneliness. I say it is a gift.”
© Tina Barney
Tina Barney
Known for:
Capturing the relationship between family members, different as supposed to the clichéd stick-up-your-ass household portrait hanging above the fireplace. Her fascination with this subject started with the exploration of her own family in North America. Her years of experience made her able to understand the private and complex relationship between family members. “I began photographing what I knew.”.
Highlight: Theatre Of Manners (1997)
Theatre Of Manners (1997) © Tina Barney
Quote: “I want to make approaching the image possible. I want every object as clear and precise as possible so that the viewer can really examine them and feel as if they are entering the room. I want my pictures to say, “You can come inside here. This is not a forbidden place.” I want you to be with us and to share this existence with us. I want every single thing to be seen, the beauty of it all: the textures, the fabrics, the colors, the china, the furniture, the architecture.”
Stephanie Sinclair
Known for:
Confronting us with gender and human rights issues such as child marriage and self-immolation in a direct yet beautiful way, evoking action, shock and compassion.
Highlight: Too Young To Wed (2012)
Quote: "We can’t just present a solution before we’ve presented the problem, or they’ll feel like it’s already taken care of and it’s not urgent. We want these issues to feel urgent, because for the girls being forced into marriage, it is urgent."
Russia, Oblast Murmansk, 2006 / Brigade number three - from the series NomadsLife © Jeroen Toirkens
Jeroen Toirkens
Known for:
Covering every nomadic tribe in the Northern Hermisphere through the lens of a camera, uncovering the unknown facets of what nomadism in this modern age entails.
Highlight: NomadsLife
Solitude. Norway, E75 near Vardø, 21.04.2013 - from the NomadsLife series © Jeroen Toirkens
Quote: “For me, photography has always been a kind of excuse to do all sorts of things, to be present in many places. I think it's just great to connect to a group of people who, for whatever reason, are forced to work together and to live together, to be a participant in that, in that life.”
