Alec Soth’s blog led me over to the notebooks of William Gedney online at Duke and to a nice definition of documentary art that Gedney quotes in one of his notebooks from John Swarkowski:
“A documentary art work must appear to be unmanipulated, literal, clear, complete, and easy; it must not allow its art to show; it must not be obviously elegant or ornamental; it must at least pretend objectivity.” — link (bottom left page)
That’s a clear definition, and good enough. Cuts away some from what could be considered documentary art, but doesn’t get too specific, which would only lead to the trouble of being, you know, too specific, and leaving out what could be considered documentary art. Better to define what something isn’t, rather than what it should be.
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