Lyndsay Tipton - Studio vs. Documentary Photography

Studio and documentary photography seem like two very different branches stemming from the same tree. Studio photography seems much more stiff to me, which in my mind, would make it the more "controlled" of the two. As we discussed back during week one about Keita, often times a person would have a large say in the way that they were photographed. Sometimes they would ask to have their most prized possessions in the photos with them. They may choose to dress a certain way that makes them appear "better looking" or more wealthy. On one hand, these photos are important because they are exact portrayals of what the photographer's customers wanted. On the other hand, often times those portrayals were not necessarily true, so they cannot be looked at as an honest representation of that person or of the black community as a whole.

Documentary photography is entirely different from studio photography in the sense that it is not something that is being paid for. Studio photographers would have customers come to their studio and pay to have their picture taken. Documentary photographers would go out and into the community and take photographs of people that were doing every day things and were not necessarily prepared to be having their picture taken, This type of photography is much less controlled in that way. I think that what this means for the photographer and the person being photographed is that they are producing a much more honest image to the viewer. They are creating something that can be seen as historically accurate and could be used to show any number of people exactly what it was like to be a black person during the particular time period in which the photograph was taken (the Harlem Renaissance, for example).