Categorization of Social Documentary Photographs Based on Literary Genres:Prose, Poetry, & Songs

Although portraying elements and events of human society in an impartial, factual, and realistic way is one of the objectives of social documentary photography; however, such photographs don’t just serve to explicitly present and narrate social occurrences, but they can also attract the audience’s attention via their form and semantics. Hence, considering the communicative nature and expression capability, it can be stated that just the same way that mankind employs language in different methods and creates literary genres (prose, poetry, and song), social documentary photographer can also generate photographs similar to literary genres in terms of quality through using capabilities and expressive tools of his medium.  Therefore, this study aims to categorize social documentary photographs based on literary genres (prose, poetry, and song).  Assuming that there are similarities between literary genres and social documentary photography, the question arises that “using what elements the photographer can create photographs similar to literary genres?”  The results of the study, conducted using descriptive-analytical method of research through desk study of library resources, demonstrate that the main characteristic of each of the literary genres (prose, poetry, and song) are noticeable in social documentary photographs in the way that some of them, like prose, hold a referential function and provides information to the audience; others, such as poetry, create a sense of pleasure due to their forms while others, like song, have an obscure quality thus making the audience deliberate upon. Consequently, social documentary photographs can be categorized as prose-like photographs (information-oriented), poetry-like (form-oriented), and song-like (meaning-oriented). Photograph's frame and the moment of taking it are the main elements in the creation of each of the photographs.