Whilst I find this topic somewhat engaging, I found the text incredibly difficult to read and understand critically. Something that I thought was quite interesting was the idea that all photography is documentary as it’s all technically ‘real’ in its own form and this can sometimes blur what is categorised as documentary and the rules that seem to surround it. I think documentary is interesting in theory due to the argument of ‘how real actually is it’ and ‘how far is too far’ when it comes to manipulating or staging the image. This is a fine line and comes down to matter of opinion I think. Is it morally wrong to stage a photo, which has the appearance of documentary style (natural lighting, relaxed framing etc), in order to create a more specifically engaging response from an audience/media? Or should it be true to the event which actually happened in front of the photographers eyes? It’s a question I might like to explore later on in an essay.
Overall I found the reading very difficult and feel like I couldn’t understand the underlying message of what was being said due to my lack of academic reading skill/english. What I could understand though was quite interesting and something I would explore further.
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