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Documentary Photography in the Digital Age : from Representation to Performance
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
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The purpose of this paper is to examine how documentary photography exists in the age of digital technology and to describe the social role and meaning newly attributed to documentary photography. Having always had a certain social role, documentary photography has been directly influenced by changes in society and technology. Documentary photographs of the past have been understood in terms of recording and representation. They have been published through printed media such as newspapers and magazines. But the current documentary photographs are used and shared in real time on the internet. Around 2010, new types of documentary photographs and videos have appeared in various countries around the world. We call these new images “citizen documentary photographic images”. The existing documentary photographs created by the experts and published through the media have represented the events. They have been interpreted and understood in relation to truth-telling: truth as correspondence with reality or truth as a social construction. But citizen documentary images shared on the internet do not represent the events. They perform as events. So the question of truth in citizen documentary images should be addressed not in the representative meaning but in the performative meaning: truth as an expression for its own sake.
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