Humanist photography

It can be distinguished from photojournalism, with which it forms a sub-class of reportage, as it is concerned more broadly with everyday human experience, to witness mannerisms and customs, than with newsworthy events, though practitioners are conscious of conveying particular conditions and social trends, often, but not exclusively, concentrating on the underclasses or those disadvantaged by conflict, economic hardship or prejudice.

[3] Jean Claude Gautrand describes humanist photography as:[4] a lyrical trend, warm, fervent, and responsive to the sufferings of humanity [which] began to assert itself during the 1950s in Europe, particularly in France ... photographers dreamed of a world of mutual succour and compassion, encapsulated ideally in a solicitous vision.After World War I came a boom in photography which served to satisfy a curiosity about human existence after a conflict that killed so many and whose absence prompted those left to question the meaning of existence against an Industrial expansion which changed not only the environment but the norms of society.

[2] The late 1940s and 50s saw a further influx of foreign photographers sympathetic to this movement, including Ed van der Elsken from the Netherlands who recorded the interactions at the bistrot Chez Moineau, the dirt-cheap refuge of bohemian youths and of Guy Debord, Michele Bernstein, Gil J. Wolman, Ivan Chtcheglov and the other members of the Letterist International[21] and the emerging Situationists whose theory of the dérive[22] accords with the working method of the humanist street photographer.

These publications include the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Vu, Point de Vue, Regards, Paris Match, Picture Post, Life, Look, Le Monde illustré, Plaisir de France and Réalités which competed to give ever larger space to photo-stories; extended articles and editorials that were profusely illustrated, or that consisted solely of photographs with captions, often by a single photographer, who would be credited alongside the journalist, or who provided written copy as well as images.

Of particular importance in this regard is The Family of Man, a vast travelling exhibition curated by Edward Steichen for MoMA, which presented a unifying humanist manifesto in the form of images selected from amongst, literally, a million.

I championed the cause of the common man, for people who were not as well off as myself”[33]The movement is in marked contrast to the contemporaneous ‘art’ photography of the USA, which was a country less directly exposed to the trauma that inspired the humanist philosophy.

[34] Nevertheless, there too ran a current of humanism in photography, first begun in the early 20th century by Jacob Riis,[35] then Lewis Hine, followed by the FSA and the New York Photo League [see the Harlem Project led by Aaron Siskind] photographers exhibited at Limelight gallery.

Books were published such as those by Dorothea Lange[11] and Paul Taylor (An American Exodus, 1939), Walker Evans and James Agee (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1941), Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell (You Have Seen Their Faces, 1937), Arthur Rothstein and William Saroyan (Look At Us,..., 1967).

It is praised for expressing humanist values such as empathy, solidarity, sometimes humor, and mutual respect of cameraperson and subject in recognition of the photographer, usually an editorial freelancer, as auteur on a par with other artists.