Making A Documentary Photograph (1511) March 2007

The original title for this images was 'Women's Liberation March, London, 1979'. In fact it was a National Abortion march that began at Marble Arch and rallied in Trafalgar Square on 31 October 1979.

In 1979 I was studying film and photography and had an interest in documentary. The picture here was an attempt to illustrate some thinking. The question I was attempting to tackle was; what makes a photograph a 'documentary' photograph. Is it just captured or is it highly constructed? Is it fact or fiction? Is it a lie or the truth? Stuff like that. The writing wasn't going well so I decided to try an experiment. The idea was to (re)construct a scene based on another (documentary) photograph and maybe by stepping through this process I would gather something to write about.

The image I chose was 'Women's Liberation March, New York, 1971' by Garry Winogrand, which is on page 87 of his book 'Public Relations'. The key elements in the image that I had decided to make were: the confrontation between interviewer and interviewee; the sound recordist and directional microphone; a movie camera lens; a look (possibly at camera) from someone in the crowd; and a written sign.

I'm not sure if making the image helped my writing, but the photographic process was much more enjoyable than doing the writing.

See the Garry Winogrand image here