Look online at Paul Seawright’s work, Sectarian Murders.

• How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827 [accessed 24/02/14]
• What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?
• If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

Paul Seawright’s series of images referred to as Sectarian Murders is a collection of 12 colour images taken in 1987/88. The photographs are of locations around Belfast where bodies of victims of sectarian murders in the early 1970s were found. Each image is accompanied by text taken from newspaper reports with any reference to the victim’s religion removed.

How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827 [accessed 24/02/14]

In discussing his work, although not the Sectarian Murders series specifically, Seawright talks about the fine balance between documentary and photography and photography as art. He states that:

…if it is too explicit it becomes journalistic, I guess if it’s too ambiguous it becomes meaningless so the holy grail is to work that visually engages people, that draws them in and then that gives itself up, gives it meaning up slowly.

Paul Seawright

What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?

The core of Seawright’s argument is that as a piece of art his images should give the viewer enough information to construct their own meaning whereas, if the image is presented as documentary image it needs to convey it’s meaning quickly and that there is less scope for viewers to create a meaning for themselves.

To assess whether I agree with Seawright’s argument I tried looking at the image without the accompanying text. My eye was drawn from the top of the image, down the slide to the patch of ground at the bottom and then up to the boat. The meaning of the image was ambiguous and I was left wondering if the boat was the primary subject.

Reading the text and looking again at the image changed the context and and my thoughts changed:

• Why was this individual killed?
• Why was their body left here?
• What did it achieve?
  
• How did the victim’s family cope with their loss?
• Do the perpetrators regret their actions?
  

To test Seawright’s argument I found a documentary image image taken in Northern Ireland around the same time. The picture below is of one of the demonstrators shot dead by British troops on Sunday 30th January 1972, Bloody Sunday.

I find the image shocking the complete antithesis of the Seawright image above, which could be described as bucolic, but it prompted me to ask many of the same questions:

• Why was this individual killed?
  
• Who shot them?
• Who is the man crouching next to the body?
• Who are the figures whose faces we cannot see?
• Why did it happen?
• What did it achieve?
• How did the victim’s family cope with the aftermath?

Thinking about the two images I find that I agree with Seawright but only partially. Seawright’s image on its own is ambiguous, it is only when viewed with the accompanying text, which provides context, that the viewer can work out the meaning of the image for themselves. The second image is unambiguous and requires no text to explain to the viewer what they are looking at so in that sense Seawright’s position that the difference between a documentary and an artistic image is the directness and speed at which information is conveyed is correct. Where I disagree with Seawright is that in looking at both images with all their contextual information, I find myself asking the same questions and that ultimately the images have the same, or very similar, meanings. In effect I arrived at the same point for both images, albeit by different routes.

If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

As image makers we provide the viewer with information which they will interpret and give their own meaning, this may be the same meaning as we intended when making the picture or they may assign their own, different meaning. In the same way if the fact that we may define a documentary image as art does not mean that someone who views the work will chose to define it in the same way. What is more important than a definition given by the photographer who produced the image is the context in which the work is viewed. An image viewed as a 6 x 4 picture in a news article will probably be viewed differently than the same image printed 36 x 24 and viewed in a gallery or museum regardless of the definition, documentary or art, given by the photographer.

Sources

CAIN: Events: Civil Rights – A Chronology of Main Events, 1964-1972. 2018. CAIN: Events: Civil Rights – A Chronology of Main Events, 1964-1972. [ONLINE] Available at: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm. [Accessed 13 December 2018].

Paul Seawright – Paul Seawright. Sectarian Murder (1988) – Hyman Collection – British Photography. 2018. Paul Seawright – Paul Seawright. Sectarian Murder (1988) – Hyman Collection – British Photography. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.britishphotography.org/artists/17199/ei/1739/paul-seawright-paul-seawright-sectarian-murder-1988. [Accessed 13 December 2018].

Paul Seawright. 2018. Sectarian Murder — Paul Seawright. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian. [Accessed 13 December 2018].Vimeo. 2018. Catalyst: Paul Seawright on Vimeo. [ONLINE] Available at: https://vimeo.com/76940827. [Accessed 13 December 2018].

Vimeo. 2018. Catalyst: Paul Seawright on Vimeo. [ONLINE] Available at: https://vimeo.com/76940827. [Accessed 13 December 2018].