Anadolu university journal of art & design cilt / volume sayi / number aralik / december 2016 issn: 2146-7692

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SANAT & TASARIM DERGİSİ
This is mainly due to the fact that oftentimes at the moment of an event no professional 
photographers are present, so that events such as the burning Concorde in Paris, the tsunami, 
or the terrorist attacks in London in 2005 were first photographed by lay people who had the 
possibilities to record them at the moment of their occurrence with mobile phones or digital 
cameras. Frequently, such images are picked up and distributed as press photographs by the 
media, as happened with the attacks in the London underground in 2005. The BBC obtained 
numerous photographs by photo amateurs and then put them on their news page (Visual 12) 
(Giannetti, 2008).
Meanwhile, the integration of such images or stills from amateur videos is very common and 
accepted. Also the pictures of the explosion of the reactor I in Fukushima in March 2011 went 
around the world as press photos and ultimately hark back to sequences of a surveillance video. 
Via the publication context, a documenting and proving function is attributed to these pictures, 
even if sometimes, as in the example of the explosion of the reactor at Fukushima, there is little 
to be recognized. The sequence of four individual images from the video shows a blurred view of 
the nuclear power plant. Three reactor blocks, one in the section on the right-hand side, and two 
of the cooling towers can be seen. The image sequence gives information about an apparently 
happening explosion indicated alone by the expanding clouds of smoke (Visual 13) (Alunno, 
2013).
Visual 13.Explosion of the reactor Fukushima I, March 2011, © Reuters 

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50
ANADOLU ÜNİVERSİTESİ
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, the perception of the image as an imitation of reality, as testimonies of history 
that connote both the references on history painting as well as on photojournalism in photog-
raphy, revealed as rhetorical. That is because photography always, beyond every evoked reality 
promise, conveys starting points to decipher the conceived deception. The detection of decep-
tion is image-strategically achieved via grotesque figurative elements, which emphasize the ar-
tificiality of the representation and produce a break in the uniformity and the causality of the 
image narrative.
In this study, I took up the discourses on the relationship between photography and docu-
mentary to ask for the forms of reality policies and truth policies in the field of art. As my review 
of the recent literature about the relation between photography and documentary has shown, 
the relationship of photography, documentary, and art has only been reflected marginally and 
if so, then especially concerning the concept of artistic documentary photography. The existing 
literature can also hardly clarify the open and continuing fascination of the documentary and 
the question of how this fascination becomes important in photographic images located in an 
art context. In this respect, for me the question of the relation of art, photography, and docu-
mentary was central to encourage the discussion about the functions and features of a concept 
of the documentary. Why do many of the art works, in their reference to the documentary, relate 
just to the medium of photography? As my analyses of the artistic works show, these works full 
well draw on the power of suggestion and fascination of a photographic having recourse to the 
documentary.
Between the poles of the documentary, the art context, photography, and the event there is 
developing a perception of the events the pictorial worlds relate to and that does not aim at the 
documentation of the events. Instead, the works involve the viewers in an eventfulness of ima-
ges by reflecting artistically that the event itself is actually not presentable, because it is always 
present and absent at the same time in the representation. With this, the artistic pictorial worlds 
do not suggest the documentation or the reconstruction of events, but bring home how these 
events only establish themselves via photos and in the process of viewing.
For just as the documentary is not to be understood as a result but as an action always linked 
with numerous power formations, the artistic images establish a relation to the events they have 
recourse to. However, they do not act as evidence that the events actually took place, but reflect 
that the readability of the world, the visual representation of events can never fully succeed. In 
this respect, the artistic approach is based on a difference to the event and is ultimately designed 
to loss.

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51
SANAT & TASARIM DERGİSİ
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Figurs References
Visual 1. Caspar David Friedrich: the Mer de Glace, 1823/1824http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=2952299  
(25.02.2016).
Visual 2. Firefighters raising the Flag at the WTC on September 11, 2001.
Photo by Ricky Flores Gannett News Service/The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News) http://www.100megsfree2.com/jjscherr/
scherr/091101.htm.
Visual 3. Anti-war: Mick Jagger took part in the demonstrations at Grosvenor Square, London in 1968 . Image ID: BTXR9X  
Copyright: © Daily Mail/Rex / Alamy Stock Photo. http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-demonstrations-1968-jan-jun-
anti-vietnam-war-protest-march-carrying-32551174.html (27.02.2016).
Visual 4. Egyptian anti-government protesters climb atop an Egyptian army armored personnel carrier, next to a signpost 
bearing the words “Down Mubarak”, in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) http://dailyme.
tumblr.com/.
Visual 5. This first campaign is Action! for Diesel by KesselsKramer in Amsterdam. 2002. http://creativewondersblog.blogs-
pot.com/2005_07_24_archive.html.
Visual 6. Terry Fincher. Starving children in Karamoja in northeastern Uganda during the famine of 1980. http://www.
gettyimages.ae/detail/news-photo/starving-children-in-karamoja-in-northeastern-uganda-during-news-photo/79155914.
Visual 7. A woman looks at the destruction of Haret Hreyk after the ceasefire was declared on August 15th, 2006. ©2006 
Derek Henry Flood. http://the-war-diaries.com/?p=756.
Visual 8. Hocine/AFP: Bentalha, Algeria, Algiers, September 23, 1997, World Press Photo of the year 1997, in: World Press 
Photo 98, hg. Foundation World Press Photo, http://karynavso.blogspot.com/.
Visual 9. Jean-Marc Bouju/AP: Najaf, Iraq, March 31, 2003, World Press Photo of the year 2003, http://karynavso.blogspot.
com/.
Visual 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream#/media/File:The_Scream.jpg 2015.

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