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Transcendent Documentary Photography
Evan's Image for "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"
The way in which photographers and writers accurately depict facts with feelings in their collaborations is vital to documentary photography. Words alone cannot make it possible to see, know, and feel the details of life, to give off the reaction that you are experiencing a part of someone else’s life. In Agee and Evans’ “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”, their approach was as gentle and straightforward as possible. To avoid any exploitation, manipulation, or alternate versions of reality, their main goal had no intentions of political propaganda. It was simply to show other Americans the life of Southerners. For others such as Caldwell and Bourke-White in “You Have Seen Their Faces,” making alterations, embellishment, and even fabricating quotes made it difficult to show real life for those suffering in the South.
Unlike, Caldwell and Bourke-White, Agee and Evans made a strenuous effort to avoid labeling and patronizing. Agee and Evans presented their subjects quite differently. Agee’s explanations of the interaction with the tenants are free of condescending descriptions. The author gave the tenants respect, and through this showed the beauty of struggle in their photographs. Bourke-White’s photos, albeit, were amazing; we saw their ripped clothing; we saw the pain in their eyes, we saw the doubt and worries of the future, we saw their frail, almost skeleton like figures, etc.
Bourke-White and Caldwell sought out to capture their experience of this world, and they did so zealously and embellished a lot of the details through the stereotypical quotes underneath the photographs. Although the authors may not have intended the captions to particularly reflect this, nonetheless it was a reflection of their own view and not the true words of those living in that moment. Agee, on the other hand, documented everything with respect for the people he was portraying. Reality was in no way tampered with. Evans did not expose reality. He revealed it. More so, he allowed it to reveal itself.
On the other hand...
Agee did in some ways tamper with reality by telling the story of his and Evans' journey through the filter of himself as a relatively unstable narrator. He did not simply record what the families he and Evans lived with were saying, but surrounded those quotes with his own thoughts and actions. It's interesting to think about how their experience might have differed if they had not so deeply infiltrated the lives of their subjects and rather stayed outside of the environment as much as possible.
Corresponding Quotes
For me, the Bourke White photographs were troubling because of the accompanying text. The fact that they made up the "stereotypical quotes" as you write, seems to only disconnect them from their experience with their subjects. It's almost bizarre the things the people appear to be "saying" through those quotes and seems a bit ridiculous in many aspects. I think in this case, the words actually make it harder to see and know the details of life, especially knowing that these are fabricated. It makes you wonder what else might have been manipulated.