When Fact Is Fiction

• ‘When making a documentary work, people will talk about the subject, rather than the visual strategy or the visual approach.’ p.98.
• Pinckers used ‘fiction to recreate a truth that was imagined in the first place. It’s a delicate balancing act, he admits, but that is exactly what makes it so interesting.’ p.99.
• W. Eugene Smith said that he ‘doesn’t object to staging if and only if he feels that it is an intensification of something that is absolutely authentic to the place.’ p.101.
• “I didn’t write the rules- why should I follow them?” W. Eugene Smith,The New York Times, 3 March 2013. p.101.
  
• “The honesty lies in my, the photographer’s, ability to understand.” W. Eugene Smith. p.101.
  
• Staging photography is a taboo in traditional documentary photography. p.101.
• Creating meaning through editing, rather than creating a concept and then illustrating it.  p.102
• On editing and sequencing: ‘[it relies] not only chronological or visual connections between photographs, but also making use of symbols and metaphors.’ p.103.
• ‘Image binding is a fiction the author creates by having one photograph following another in sequence.’ p.104.
• “When a photobook begins to happen, the stores in a sense has already been written.” Doug DuBois. p.104

• Photography has ‘codes’ (eg: advertising ‘code’ makes the audience feel they are being sold to.) Photojournalistic ‘code’ could include pixellation or amateur footage, as this seems ‘more real.’ p.105.
• ‘Aesthetics play a role in making us believe what we are seeing.’ p.105.
• The reality of an image doesn’t exist if you are capturing or creating work about a topic that the event of which happened in the past. p.106
• Thinking about creating a photo book- it is a more intimate and slower experience than viewing work in a gallery. Work could be printed faintly, or placed behind or in front of other images, obscured. How does the layout and printing of the book enhance the messages of the story, or encourage the viewer to see the work in the way in which the author would like them to experience it? p.107.

Vanthuyne, S 2020, ‘Fiction as a Visual Strategy  in the Photobook: How Contemporary Photographers Challenge the Documentary Genre through the Printed Page’ in N Wynants (ed.), When Fact Is Fiction: Documentary Art in the Post-Truth Era, Valiz, Amsterdam, pp. 96-111.