Olivier Lugon's 'Le style documentaire' Analyzes Documentary Photography

In 'Le style documentaire', Olivier Lugon examines the reception and conceptualization of documentary photography rather than defining its essence. He argues that photographs are shaped by discourse, expectations, and misinterpretations. The book focuses on the aesthetic, institutional, economic, and political contexts in which the 'documentary style' emerged, drawing on the works of August Sander and Walker Evans. Using period texts and archives, Lugon traces a practice caught between modernism and its decline, collective art and individual expression, and the utopia of universal legibility versus its limits, such as physiognomy co-opted by the Nazis. The documentary style is characterized not by novelty but by a symbolic attempt to preserve a decaying world, with photographers acting as witnesses rather than agents of change. The review by Elisabeth Wetterwald appears in artpress.