Documentary Photography

Since the invention of the camera attempts have been made by organizations to to use the medium to produce a photographic record of the present. Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine used documentary photographs to help being about social reform. Roy Stryker's Farm Security Administration (FSA) project in the United States during the 1930s is the best known attempt by a government to employ photographers as documentarists. Paul Strand and Berenice Abbot and the Photo League attempt to organize the photographing of working class communities in New York is another example of this approach.