Look online at Paul Seawright’s work, Sectarian Murders.
• How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen
to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827 [accessed
24/02/14]
• What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?
• If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

Paul Seawright revisited the scenes of Sectarian murders that took place in the 1970’s and photographed the area in present times, this challenges the boundaries between documentary and art because the images are not obvious in what they mean and the viewer has to come up with the meaning. A documentary photograph would include different elements and subjects within the image and would be taken without thoughtful composition. For example, the photograph below is an area where a murder took place but a dog has been photographed, this is art because if it was a documentary photo the dog would not have been included in the image and it would have possibly been at a wider angle than this.

The core of Seawright’s argument is that if an image is too explicit it is journalistic and if the image is too ambiguous it becomes meaningless to the viewer so the photographer has to strike a balance between the two. The image needs to be ambiguous enough to leave space for the viewer to derive meaning – it needs to be visually engaging and give it’s meaning up slowly to the viewer. Once the viewer knows the context they can resonate with all kinds of ideas associated with the image.

I think documentary photo described as art does change its meaning, the word art implies that there is freedom given to the photographer to include elements in the image that are not necessarily directly related to the story so is not true to the story in the purest sense.

Bibliography

Paul Seawright. (2020). Sectarian Murder — Paul Seawright. [online] Available at: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].