Documentary Task

For this task I have chosen to take a slightly different approach and look at a best known and Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Nick Ut and then the similar interpretation of the image by Matthias Wahner.

Nick Ut’s image of the 9 year old Kim Phuc in the South Vietnamese napalm attack on the Trảng Bàng village during the Vietnam War for me is the most recognised documentary images. Nick Ut recalls that Kim Phuc screamed "Nong qua, nong qua" ("too hot, too hot") as he photographed her running past him. When the girl had stopped Nick Ut and ITN correspondent Christopher Wain poured water over her burns. Nick Ut took the poor girl to hospital and pleaded with the hospital staff to help as he knew that they would most likely help the people they believed had more chance of being saved. While Kim was on the operating table Ut left the hospital and went in the direction of Saigon to bring his film to the AP. The morality of the photographer is always questioned in these sorts of circumstances, how involved they are in what they are document. It is questionable how a photographer can stand by and see people get killed and instead of helping merely taking pictures of it. However some photographers feel it is their moral duty to help like Nick Ut the purpose of them being there is never too far from their minds as Ut did urgently make a trip to get his film developed. Many documentary photographers believe that by document these horrific events it is making people aware of the situations that are going on in an objective manor. However that for me is questionable also as the photographer has control over what they choose to depict and how they choose to represent it.

This is a view also held by photographer Matthais Wahner; he questions all these preconceptions concerning the documentary genre. In his forty piece series, Man without Qualities, with the help of digital montage, inserts himself into some of the most well know photographic documentations in history.
In my view, by placing himself in these recognised photographs, Wahner is making a general statement about documentary photographers. Although not as literal, they too impose their ideas and opinions onto an image and its subject by merely taking the photograph of a situation in the first instance and portraying it in a certain way. I have to wonder how much our images of history are manipulated simply through the judgment of the person holding the camera.