French Congressman arago, who helped Daguerre establish photography, delivered a speech on the day when photography came out: "How much benefit will archaeologists get from this new technology! Carved in Thebes? It will take 20 years to copy the hieroglyphs on the huge stone tablets of Memphis and Karnak Temple, and there will be a large number of craftsmen who are good at drawing hieroglyphs. If you use silver photography, then only one person can complete the task of the same scale ... "In this passionate speech, arago emphasized the ability of photography to accurately copy objective things, that is, the" documentary "ability of photography. "Ji" is the same as "Ji", and the so-called "documentary" is a vivid and accurate representation of various things or phenomena existing in real life. This characteristic of photography art comes from the yoke relationship of lens imaging and the photosensitive characteristics of photosensitive materials, which is given by the technology of photography art. At the beginning of photography, when a reporter explained what photography is to readers who have never seen photography, he once described it like this: "It's like holding a mirror on the road, and the surrounding scenery is reflected very carefully, and then taking the mirror home, these scenery will stay on it forever." (1) This is a vivid description of the documentary characteristics of photography.
The documentary nature of photography has three different connotations: first, photography can accurately copy objective objects, and then the documentary nature is true and realistic; Secondly, the photographer must go to the event site in person, even if he expresses his feelings with photography art, he must shoot the things or phenomena in a certain scene, and the documentary performance at this time is a scene; Finally, photography can only show things in a certain time and space, but has no ability to show things in the past and the future. At this time, the documentary nature is manifested as reality. (2) The documentary nature of photography defines the essence and creative techniques of photography, but in some cases, if we deliberately stick to documentary, it will hinder the creation of photography. In this regard, there has been a heated debate in the photography art world. Some photographers insist on the viewpoint of "documentary photography", thinking that people need photography because it is a record of the truth, and the camera must face the real person, the real thing, the real scene and the true feelings, otherwise it is not "photography" but "taking a fake". They also believe that the recording of specific visual images is the characteristics and even life of photography, and it is the basis for photography to stand on its own feet in the forest of art. The authenticity of photography is different from other arts, and it is generalized and can be fabricated. The authenticity of photographic art must realize the unity of "three truths" of real people, real events and real scenes, so as to realize the beauty of photographic works of art, while other photographers whose main direction is artistic creation insist on the viewpoint of "technical documentary". They think that the theory of documentary photography is only applicable to news photography. For artistic photography, documentary is only a natural attribute, which is brought by the technical conditions of photography art, but this documentary does not mean truth, and truth does not necessarily need documentary to be realized. The authenticity of photography art, like the authenticity required by other arts, must be realized by exerting the subjective initiative of the author. Judging from the development of photography, today's readers would not have enjoyed the impact of those decisive moments without the efforts of photographers such as salomon and Bresson who insisted on documentary photography. Without the whimsy of photographic artists such as Manry and hallmans, readers would not feel the fantastic world in the picture. While the theorists of photographic documentary and technical documentary are arguing endlessly, some eclectic theorists throw out the concepts of "broad documentary" and "narrow documentary". They define "narrow documentary" as the consistency of facts and images, and require that the content of photos must be real people in real life, and the real scenes of specific environments and people at that time must be truthfully recorded; "Documentary in a broad sense" means that in artistic photography, the authenticity of photographic art has a wider meaning. As long as the subject matter chosen by the photographer is authentic and typical in real life, the material can be processed in the creative process and conditions can be created to complete the creation. ③
What kind of performance should documentary photography have? I believe every reader has his own opinion. For news photography, documentary is undoubtedly a "photo documentary", and there can be no artificial and subjective gap between images and facts. Of course, the distortion caused by lens characteristics or shutter speed and aperture size under certain conditions is understandable. For artistic photography, the photographer must make some artistic deformation on the image on the basis of recording objective things, so as to infiltrate his thoughts, feelings, aesthetic ideals and artistic interests into the artistic image of the photographic picture.
Photo documentary of news photography is based on technical documentary. Many times, the "truth" in photos is just a representation. To truly equate documentary with reality, it needs the careful selection, refinement and generalization of photographic artists. Because in real life, truth, goodness, beauty, falsehood and ugliness are always intertwined, and some seemingly real things or phenomena come from artificial manipulation and control. At this time, "documentary" can only be "true lies". In this regard, the French photography theorist Gizer? Flanders once pointed out in his masterpiece "Photography and Society": "It (camera) looks both accurate and fair. Photography can better express the will of the ruling class than any other media, and explain events from the perspective of that class, because although photography is extremely realistic, it has an illusory objectivity. The lens, the so-called impartial eyes, actually allows every fact to be distorted ... "However, some pictures that are false to us show the truth of life from the macro level, and The Angel in Military Uniforms is a vivid example. This picture was taken when the Japanese invaders occupied Guangdong, showing an imperial soldier who regarded refugees as his mother with his back to the bomb shelter, with a caption: "This is a true portrayal of our imperial army: on the night of occupying Guangdong, many parts of the city were caught in flames because the enemy set fire to the city and fled everywhere. Under the dense fire and smoke, many city residents packed up their soft clothes and began to flee. Under this circumstance, our army immediately rolled up its sleeves and set up a shelter in Haizhu Park to help accommodate refugees in the humanitarian spirit of' starving others and drowning others' before enjoying the fruits of victory. " From the perspective of technical documentary, this is indeed a documentary photo, but the content of the photo is a despicable trick played by the Japanese army to deceive world public opinion.
The documentary nature of photography often makes it vivid and powerful evidence. 1906, after the famous "Nanchang religious case", French missionaries lied that the death of the county magistrate was actually suicide. On March 29th, Beijing Dialect Daily published a close-up of Jiang Zhaotang, the magistrate of Nanchang, with a caption: "Jiang Daling Church in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province was murdered by Catholics with wine, and the murderer was a kind priest who advised people. The priest did it. He fabricated this situation and said that he committed suicide. The museum has defended its case four times. Today, we specially made a copperplate photo of Ambassador Jiang's injury and printed it in the newspaper. Please ask the public to see if there is such a suicide. " This is the first time that China really reported a major news event with photos, and it is also the first time that China news photos participated in the national struggle. In modern court trials, image materials represented by photographic photos have become important "court evidence". Therefore, various forensic institutions are actively recruiting and training professionals with image forensic qualification to identify the authenticity of these image evidences.
2 Instantaneous characteristics
The third essence of the documentary feature of photography art is that it can only express things in a certain time and space, but has no ability to express things in the past and the future. This is an irrefutable truth, whether in the traditional film era or today's digital age. The object recorded by the camera can only be the instantaneous state of the object in a short time from the opening to the closing of the shutter. This instantaneous feature of photography not only endows itself with certain advantages, but also brings some defects.
The first is compared with TV. In the 1940s, it took only a few years for television to become popular in the world. By the 1970s, it had exerted a strong influence on newspapers. 1972, there have been four excellent photographic reports.
Life magazine with 0 million readers "died at the age of 36" (in the words of the International Herald Tribune). The influence of television is the main reason for its demise. Compared with photography, the advantages of TV mainly lie in the dynamic images with sound, and the feature that TV can broadcast live also makes it more timely than photography reports.
Secondly, the instantaneous characteristics of photography art also provide more space for photography fraud. The authenticity of things is reflected in the flow of time and the transformation of space. For example, Churchill's lion-like anger in front of Cash's camera doesn't mean that anger is the main feature of his personality (in fact, anger is a part of everyone's personality). The counterfeiters of photographic pictures can also use this instantaneous feature of photographic art to manipulate and direct various moments to prove the authenticity of a phenomenon or something.
Thirdly, the instantaneous nature of photography brings some difficulties to the creation of photography. People often say that photography is a regrettable art, and it is also aimed at the instantaneity of photography. Painters and writers can reproduce the scene by memorizing it or by others' dictation, but once the photographer misses the wonderful moment, it is irreparable. Margaret. Burke. White once said: "If someone suddenly jumps out to block my camera while I am taking pictures, I will go crazy ―― even kill him immediately!" " ! You know, in an interview, there is often only one wonderful shot. A little delay will make it disappear without a trace. "
Although instantaneity will bring the above defects to photography, the benefits it brings to photography are still the main ones. Bresson, a synonym for photography, called the moment in photography a "decisive moment" and devoted his whole life to practice. Most excellent documentary works in the history of photography win by capturing vivid and tense moments. Specifically, the advantages of instantaneous characteristics to photography art are mainly manifested in the following aspects:
First, similar to the "blank space" in China's paintings, the interception of the instantaneous picture by photography can trigger the audience's association with the two time periods before and after this moment, thus giving the photographic works endless tension.
Secondly, photography, as the only technical means to freeze social life with high-definition static and frozen images, can highly concentrate the audience's attention, so that they have the time, conditions and interest to carefully observe and analyze the images in the picture. Photographer Zheng Ming's Looking Inside and Outside the Great Wall is a classic, which freezes history with frozen images. In the picture, Queen Elizabeth and her husband are constantly looking around while visiting the Great Wall. When they parted ways again, the photographer did not hesitate to press the shutter, and an intriguing classic moment was frozen forever.
Thirdly, the immediacy of photography can solidify the social life of three-dimensional space on two-dimensional plane, thus making the works easier to read and save than TV.
As the saying goes, "One cannot step into the same river twice." It is precisely because once a beautiful moment is lost, it is impossible to perform it again, so photography is a kind of "art of regret". This puts higher demands on the photographer's ability to capture instantaneous images. Generally speaking, the capture based on quick hands and feet, sharp eyes and quick thinking is the premise of getting wonderful moments, which will be expounded in the following chapters.
3 image features
The reason why photography art is photography art is that it attracts the audience's attention with a special visual language different from words. This visual language is intuitive and vivid, and is easily accepted by the audience. Compared with words, the visual language of photography has an extremely important advantage-it transcends geographical boundaries and can be understood by audiences of different countries and nationalities. In the second China International Photojournalism Competition held in March 2006, Russian judge fenix? Maagel? Alanovic once said: "Images are not dialects, and images can be used as an international language for people to communicate, which is very interesting." ④
Since 1990s, due to the wide spread of visual images in mass media, people began to call today's society "the era of images" or "the era of reading pictures". Expressions such as "images replace words" and "a picture is worth a thousand words" came into being, which is actually a misunderstanding of the graphic characteristics of photography. Both visual language and written language transmit information, and images or words are only carriers and media for information transmission. Whether to use images or words to convey information depends on the characteristics of the information itself. For example, in meeting news reports, we can choose words to convey important information, such as decisions and resolutions. Photography is mainly used to show some new characters and phenomena in the meeting, or to capture the wonderful moments in the meeting, so as to change the cold and rigid traditional face of meeting reporting.
In order to give full play to the advantages given by the image characteristics of photography art, photographers must strengthen the visual effect of photos through various methods. It is for this purpose that composition, light and color are emphasized. This paper focuses on the important concept of "visual impact". From the visual effect of the picture, excellent photographic pictures can be divided into two types: one is far-reaching and unforgettable, and the picture of this kind of picture is not very eye-catching, but because of its profound theme, the audience can find its artistic charm through careful taste; The other is that you can get a strong visual feeling directly on the structure of the picture without the audience's thinking. This ability of taking pictures is visual impact.
In the highly competitive modern media environment, giving full play to the visual impact of photographic works of art has become an important magic weapon for plane media to defeat the enemy, and the use of large cover pictures is one of the means to strengthen the visual impact.
To strengthen the visual impact of photographic works of art, photographers need to start from both content and form. The thrilling content can be fascinating, and even if there is no peculiar form, it can also cause a strong visual impact, such as Adams's "Shooting Over * * *" and Mike? The consequences of drought in Uganda, Wales. This requires photographers to pay attention to choosing those moments that are informative, touching and have strong symbolic significance; Scenes full of emotional appeal, humor or grandeur can also enhance the visual impact of photographic art pictures; The use of wide-angle lens, close-range shooting, changing perspective and other technical means can also make the picture produce strange effects.
In addition to recording, instantaneity and image, photography also has an important feature, namely materiality or technical stipulation. In the first chapter "Photography must rely on technology", we have discussed in detail the relationship between science and technology and the development of photography. In a word, photography is an art that is highly dependent on technical means and material conditions. The development of photography is always closely related to the development of photographic equipment, which is an inevitable law that no one can change.