Social Value of Documentary Photography

Documentary photography has far-reaching power. From the analysis of word meaning, documentary photography is a kind of photography with the main appeal of recording the reality of life, which can be divided into humanistic photography and news photography. They all come from life and reality and truly reflect what we see. In other words, documentary photography has the value of recording and preserving history. Therefore, documentary photography has a unique qualification as a social witness. Documentary photography requires photographers to keep a fair eye and angle, record the real phenomena and maintain a concern for human nature. We know that documentary photography mainly reflects people, and taking the camera as a sketch is an intuitive response. As a photographer, before that, one should have high cultural accomplishment, keen insight, sensitivity to new visual images in life, sensitivity to choosing objects and sensitivity to grasping the best opportunity. Therefore, a real photo often shows a profound human power. Documentary is also proof or evidence. Photography that records social life, etc. Different from simple documentary photography, it strongly attracts people's personal reporting nature. Documentary photography shows the photographer's concern for the environment, respect for life and pursuit of humanity ... Documentary photographers use cold machines to record marginal scenes or the fact that they are "ignored" intentionally or unintentionally, but they can often use the power of images to make photography a tool to participate in social transformation. Judging from the social background and historical absence of documentary photography, its criticism and revolution are self-evident. By-product documentary photography history is the history of injustice, darkness, turbulence and austerity in the world that photographers record, express and spread. They use images to achieve the purpose of propaganda and agitation, and then promote social change and make the world a better place.