ABSTRACT
Narrative structures existed long before photography was invented, but as a medium, documentary photography is well suited to storytelling because temporality is embedded in every documentary photograph. Narrative in documentary photography encompasses traditional reportage, the quintessential human-focused intentional photo essay, and projects that are installation based, multimedia, web based, crowd sourced, collaborations, first-person narrative, drone, interactivity, audience participation, and appropriation of social media. “The documentary photograph has to carry the weight of a document,” says Salvans, who identifies both as a documentary photographer and as an artist. “It needs to convey certain information about a certain moment in time and space.” While photographing, he discovered a micro-community of Gypsies trying to exist in a deeply urban environment surrounded by a mass population that resents their very presence. The state wants to assimilate them into the mainstream population.
