Firstly listening to Gavin you can tell that she is from a print background with an invested interest in print as she starts out by explaining how print still offers better controls in terms of colour rendering than digital on screen renditions. Don't get me wrong, I love paging through a nicely printed set of pages but in my opinion modern screens are much better at rendering colour than they were ten years ago and the differences between monitors are no longer the sticking point they used to be. But for a dwindling print market its still something to hold onto.
I think that each of the the three words that Gavin describes stills has some relevance. In my mind documentary is the over arching idea but things like reportage and photojournalism are forms of documentary. I agree that between reportage and photo journalism the lines are more blurred but for me they are both forms of documentary.
As Gavin says the lines are blurring between fine art and documentary and I like the idea of a fine art documentary, why does documentary have to be gritty black and white images of war torn areas, why can't it be an artistic take about something beautiful?
Could it be how the viewer sees the photographer and the preconceptions of what the photographer usually produces that categorises the work. A fine art photographer will have a hard time doing a piece on war but it could be much more interesting as it will see war from a different point of view. As Gavin rightly points out there are more woman producing more work which in itself will produce work that is fundamentally different to what was made before.
Joseph Rodriguez on Egg
An interesting insight into Joseph Rodriguez and his gang documentary. Looking at some of his images it gives me the feeling that he embeds himself with the groups and that he then poses some of the images once the people are comfortable with him and his camera. Is that wrong of a photo journalist to pose his sitters? I guess that is Gavin's point on why we need words like Photo Journalism and Reportage.
I have more questions than answers from watching Gavin's piece. Hopefully as I go through the course some of those will be answered.