Documentary Photography Project

Brief The Hayward Gallery is launching an exhibition during summer 2012 featuring the work of documentary

photographers from around the world. You have been invited to contribute some work towards this exhibition.

Brief 1 Documenting the documentary photographer. If you respond to this brief, you will be required to follow a photographer as they document life in a

particular part of London. Half of your photographs will feature the photographer (and background) as he or she is in the process of taking the photographs, and half of them will feature the same subject matter that the photographer took but 30 to 60 second later). You will need to ensure that you capture the photographer from a range of different viewpoints (including above and below – we don’t want to see hundreds of photographs of backs of heads please!) Also you will need to consider composition – what percentage of your photograph will feature the photographer and what percentage will be the background – vary this in different photographs?

Try to think of interesting locations in London, where things are fast moving (I don’t mean traffic – don’t

waste your time just photographing cars whizzing by – one or two like this is fine – any more than 2 – forget it, you won’t get the grades). For example if you went to a market - when your photographer is photographing a scene, it might be that someone is buying something from a stall – then when you go to photograph the same scene 30 – 60 seconds later, that buyer might be gone – so the two photographs of the same scene are very different. We want to see a variety of photographs (half where both photographs are pretty similar, and half where they are different).

Statement of interest

David Bradley 'Unknown'

Documentary photography is usually situated on every day life more often of people. I was inspired by David Bradley's photography because he displayed elements that are so simple and truthful in an interesting way. This photograph by David Bradley is from his documentary collection 'Drive by shootings' His Documentary photographs were mostly black and white, which is another thing that intrigues me a lot because I think it releases the photographer. Black and white photo's are rich and the reason why I was going for the old fashioned style photos is because going through David Bradley's photos that were taken over 10 years I have realised that you could tell that the pictures were old which is what I wanted my set of documentary photos to look like. When I see old pictures for example family pictures the first message that the image communicates to me is that the photo is special to the photographer and in this case the location's I have chosen are special and have a meaning to me. Another aspect of David Bradley's work that inspired me into doing a documentary for this project is the location's he has picked. Most of his work are location's that are fast moving which was a great interest to me because you can look at that picture and take a same shot of the exact same place and the image would look completely different to the first one, and this way every picture can tell a different story depending on what's happening in the scene.

Statement of interest

Initial set of photographs

My partner in the process of taking the photographs of the location that I also will be taking pictures of.