This week's theme is documentary photography. The gist of what we learned in class was truth and distortion as photography(as a medium) can be a very powerful tool to be used for propaganda purposes etcetera because documentary work is usually reflective but at the same time it can also be manipulated to make it look "candid". 

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I chose this image "Valley of the Shadow of Death" by Roger Fenton because i feel these two images represented the title of the lesson very well in conjunction with my understanding of what i've learned in this lesson. So this image was discussed by Gilles to us that Fenton took this photo of the valley with the road full of canon balls with the intention to sell and support the government during the crimean war. Documentation commissioned by print publisher Thomas Agnew with the blessing of the British government. The photographs produced were to be used to offset the general aversion of the British people to an unpopular war.

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This documentary approach and social concerns made me question; which is reality and which is fiction? All these documentation serves a specific narrative of events, and without these events it's nothing. There will be nothing interesting worthy enough to be documented. The constant questioning of truth, how information is often manipulated, distorted and exaggerated; media manipulation etc. Very impactful, what i've learned this week. So much interesting information to absorb and it really made me think critically about the notion of fiction and reality within photography. 

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"Honest reporting is always a compromise between recording a confused real world and simpler, more powerful but manipulated images." -Gilles Massot

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