The Construction of reality in Contemporary Documentary photography

Since the 1990s, the political-socio-cultural climate generated by the globalization movement has accompanied the emergence of new documentary approaches, qualified as "contemporary." Many photographers have created works addressing various social realities, testifying to the various changes underway within their countries. While some have retained a realistic aesthetic inherent to the photographic and documentary medium, others have explored new approaches, sowing confusion over the relationship between the image and reality. Based on the observation of this similarity between France and China, regarding the emergence of this type of photography, the central question is to highlight, among the personal experiences of artists from these two countries, the various factors that push them to invent new forms of documentaries that shake up the boundary between reality and fiction. This set brings together a total of eleven photographic works. Through the notion of testimony, it offers a way of reading images whose constructed reality sows confusion, leading to the documentary quality conferred on the works.

Autorentext

Charlotte Jeanningros is a French visual artist and Ph.D. researcher.