B&W portraits as a documentary strategy

Zed Nelson's 'Disappearing Britain' B&W project was captured in impromptu studios setup on locations such as mine shaft or the harbour. By removing and separating the subjects from their natural environment we are able to learn a great deal about the individual characters or in this case their classification as a specific worker, but furthermore we are able to find out about working methods or even working conditions. Like Jeff Walls 'Backpack', which was closely based on Manet's 'The Piper', such minimal portraits teach us as much about the individual person as about the ideas of a specific time and era.

                    

                   


















Similar qualities can be found in Irving Penn photographs from the project 'Small Trades', again the subject is removed from its surroundings and placed in studio environment in order to supply with a type of classification. Such simplification allows to categorise with ease and with the use of a single photograph.

The Father of social classification was August Sander, a German photographer, who spent most of his life photographing ordinary individuals with an ambition to create a classification of the 20^th century German society. Despite dedicating to the project over 40 years of his life, August Sander never completed it.

Sander assigned his photographs into seven categories: ‘The Farmer’. ‘The Skilled Tradesmen’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Classes and Profession’, ‘The Artists’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Last People’, which included the elderly and people with disabilities, birth defects and mental issues. Sander believed in the hierarchy of occupations and this can be clearly seen in the way the photographs were captured, i.e. intellectual classes were photographed against plain backgrounds in studio environment, whilst physical labour in their natural working surroundings, often with tools of trade included.

August Sander had a very clear vision of the German society of 20^th Century. The accuracy of his vision was often questioned back in his day, with Nazis banning him from working for the lack of glorification in his photos. Today, we can appreciate the photographs as a comprehensive collection of social types and classes of Germany, mainly because of their natural capture and lack of artistry.  

I can’t help but to wonder if such classification would work today, i.e. in such vast society as England is? Can we really summarise a modern adult by inserting him or her into a single frame and therefore into a single category? I would hate to think that I am only a PA due to the task of working occupying most of my daily routine. Zed Nelson in his ‘Disappearing Britain’ was successful with his classification, because he concentrated on a niche topic of the disappearing trades and traditions. But without a doubt to create the classification of social types of today would present a great challenge.