Coles’ Ideas in The Tradition: Fact and Fiction Essay -- Photography J

Coles Ideas in The Tradition Fact and FictionThe documentary tradition as a continually developing record that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a person-to-person text (Coles 218). Coles writes The Tradition Fact and Fiction and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He all the way explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no fact or fiction but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian parades homosexual actuality they each institution their own mesh to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known iconers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside inceptions that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping. According to Coles and an outside source I found, Lange is a documentarian who vividly portrays human actuality in her writing. Lange is depicted through Robert Coles as a caring individual, whose innermost thoughts, concerns and beliefs are transferred onto her photographs, especially in her photograph of the Migrant Mother, which is from her most well-known photograph during the dustbowl era. Jack Hurleys book, Portrait of a Decade, describes more about Langes motives and background, thus making me able to break away understand Coles ideas and the other parts of the essay regarding Lange When economic disaster struck the country Dorothea Lang knew that somehow she had to be a part of the fight to win break up conditions for the poorLange had very strong feelings about social in justice and her feelings came through clearly in her photographs. Because she did not come to Washington until the next spring, Lange did not take aim part in those early, highly important discussions and critiques. Her work was done separately in the early days and primarily on the West Coast. Even so, Langes pictures spoke for her and had a tremendous influence on the formative period of historical section. ... ... more about them by studying the photograph. In this paper I used outside sources such as Hurleys book, Gawthrops, Jacobson and Moakley articles to clarify and develop deeper thinking about Coles ideas in The Tradition Fact and Fiction, with focal points being human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping. Throughout Coles essay he portrays a documentarian as one who creates their work to meet their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and their audience. He also shows, in correlation to the title, that ther e is no line between fact or fiction in documentary work they are loosely mingled, overlapping and only seen separately from a biased standpoint. Work CitedColes, Robert. The Tradition Fact and Fiction. Ways of Reading (2002) 175-218.Gawthrop, Louis. Dorothea Lange and visionary change. Society 30 (1993) 64.Hurley, Jack. Portrait of a Decade. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1972.Jacobson, Colin. A different way of seeing. Lancet 357 (2001) 1454.Moakley, Paul. End fame A room of ones own Todd Eberle on Walker Evans. Photo District News 23(2003) 128.