WE ARE surrounded by photographic images. We take them on our phones, we follow them on Instagram. They coalesce into visual static that we see but tune out. Yet we also go to museums and galleries to look at photographs that, we are told, were made by artists and merit our attention.
What's the difference? Quite simply, an artist's photograph is an expression of an individual sensibility, not merely a record of a glimpsed reality. Because it is produced by the mechanical contraption of a camera and reproduced (more or less) mechanically in a darkroom, a photograph seems less personal than a painting or sculpture. Like any other art, however, its value rests on the vision of its maker.
Documentary photography might seem to be outside the realm of art photography. In fact, an artist can portray the external world and imprint the image with a characteristic personal stamp. The test case is the work of Walker Evans, who made every effort to achieve a cool objectivity in his work. He was so scrupulous in leaching out all traces of his personality that this negative trait became a hallmark.
Evans referred to himself not as a documentary photographer, but as a photographer in the “documentary style.” Depicting Depression-era America under the auspices
