Category: Documentary

“This is the photo book that redefined what a photo book could be – personal, poetic, real.” That’s how LensCulture described Robert Frank’s seminal book of photography, The Americans. As accolades go, you could do worse.

Gopal MS insists that he is a blogger, but his photo documentation of Mumbai, and often the old city of Bombay, on Instagram says otherwise. The photos on his profile, which has over 24,000 followers, aren’t what you would expect when one says ‘street photography’.

When 29-year-old Gordon Parks arrived in Washington, in 1942, to begin his prestigious job as a photographer at the Farm Security Administration, his first assignment was to shoot: nothing. The government agency, which was born of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, had originally intended to highlight rural suffering and the plight of farmers, but that mission quickly expanded to producing a vast visual record of American life.

The official White House photographer captures in images what words often cannot – the stillness of history, the tensions of lawmaking, the humanity of the president. It was a job treasured by David Valdez, a Texan hired in 1983 to follow George H.W. Bush first as as vice president and then president.

Space fans, we have a visitor from the great beyond. This week’s rundown of space photos starts with a big “Welcome back!” to Comet McNaught, which caused a sensation in 1744. When astronomers first observed it overhead in the 18th century, McNaught confounded them because it had not one, but six tails spread out across the sky.