| dc.description.abstract | The aim for this dissertation focuses on the theme of social photography. One of the main motivations of social photographers is to pour a special kind of affection into how we sense social reality, to promote attention to it and to transform it. Social documentary photography in this view embodies a direct feeling about an event given by the senses as well as the visual quality and character of representing that event, like a great impact from art to society, which makes photography an aesthetic form that is different from other arts, such as painting or theater. To illustrate the practice of social photography, my thesis examines the work of three social photographers, respectively Lewis Hine, Sebastião Salgado, and Martin Parr.
The documentary function of social photography provides a twofold meaning. On the one hand, it has an aesthetic meaning for enabling sensory appreciation or admiration. On the other hand, it conveys important information about events, people, and actual social affairs. The claim I am interested in assessing is one in which the value of social photography is the latter. Namely, the nature of social photography is to provide valuable information about our social world, others, and ourselves. This is the statement I aim to examine and defend. In particular, I will analyze the photographer′s on-site witness records—presented and understood in series of images—as they are unique materials to comprehend our visual perception of how we understand society.
Photography has been an important topic in aesthetics as its practice and its sensory appreciation have generated a collection of novel inquiries about aesthetic value. The trend of documentary photography has been gradually confused with artistic aesthetics, but contemporary documentary photography has focused on the connotation of the photograph and conceptualizing the practice of taking photographs not just the beauty of the photographic form. | en_US |