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Cheryll Witting
This episode from the TV series Life Through a Lens is dedicated to the celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz. It documents her artistic life from childhood up until the death of her dear friend Susan Sontag.
This film is about a blind photographer who uses his images and Braille inscriptions to confront what his other senses tell him about the world to what other people see. The story talks about trust and facts and their role in human relationships, but it also makes us reflect on the notion of photography as objective proof. One of the many must-watch photographer movies.
Gordon Parks was a musician, a writer, a film director and a photographer. His photographic career was more prominent between 1940 and 1970 as he documented civil rights issues. He also worked doing glamour photography. The documentary gives you an insight into his fascinating life.
Frustrated artist Kingdom Swann receives a camera as a gift and redirects his creative work from painting to photography. His nude photography, made in the style of classical painting, gained an unexpected success.
The film is about the friendship developed between James Dean and Dennis Stock as the latter got assigned by Magnum Photos Agency to photograph Dean. The film is directed by Anton Corbijn, who is also a professional photographer who understands the complex relationship created between the author and the subject in these types of projects. One of the best films about photography to watch.
A young female intern editor from a high-art magazine called Frame meets the drug-addicted lesbian photographer who lives upstairs. As they become close, they start to work together, and the boundaries between professional and personal life become blurry. Dark secrets start to emerge in time, and their passionate and successful story needs to confront a hard truth.
Award winner and Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas comes back to Nicaragua ten years after documenting the revolution to interview the people she photographed. Surely one of the most intriguing photography films out there.
This television film tells the love affair between fashion photographer David Bailey and the model Jean Shrimpton. The filmmakers used several techniques to recreate the original shoots, including CGI.
This multi-award-winning documentary gives you access to the photography process behind the images of Gregory Crewdson. He uses a filmmaking crew to stage and light his scenes to create images that look like documentary photography moments.
Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor are among the most talented couples in the fine art photography scene. The documentary Jerry & Maggie: This is not Photography shows the creative process and technical execution of their world famous photos.
The film tells the story of three journalists and photojournalists covering the Nicaraguan Revolution. This political thriller also questions the ethics of photojournalism and the role of photography as proof.
Richard Boyle was a photojournalist and war photographer who covered the revolution in Cambodia the civil war in Lebanon, amongst many other conflicts. Salvador is a film about his time documenting the Salvadoran civil war.
Not typically mentioned as a photography movie, City of God is the story of organised crime in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. However, it is narrated by a young photographer who further develops his interest in photography by photographing the largest gang in the city.
Pecker is a young boy who likes to take pictures of his family and friends. When a big city art dealer discovers him, he becomes famous, but he quickly discovers that fame comes with a price. This comedy film reflects the art world in a light and enjoyable manner.
Margaret Bourke-White was a wartime photojournalist and documentarist. She is famous, amongst other things, because one of her pictures made the cover of the first issue of Life Magazine. Double-exposure is a tv film featuring her life as she was the first foreign photographer allowed to photograph the Soviet industry.
This film is based on the experiences of two journalists who were trapped in Cambodia during the Year Zero cleansing campaign, where two million people died. The photographic aspect comes from the photojournalist Al Rockoff.
Berenice Abbott excelled as a portrait photographer, then moved on to documenting the streets of New York and finally focused on science photography. This film shows her life throughout the 20th century as she is in her later years.
The first documentary that we want to recommend is the one titled Tales By Light. This one already has 2 seasons and each one of them consists of 6 episodes of approximately 20 minutes. In each of these episodes, the viewer will be able to accompany famous photographers on their trips to the most unknown and remote places to search for the most impressive images.
Through these stories, you will not only be able to discover new places but also, you will be able to learn about what technique to use and how certain landscapes should be photographed through great photographers.
Finding Vivian Maier tells the story of an auction where John Maloof bought an archive of previously unpublished photographs. The archive belonged to Vivian Maier, a hitherto anonymous photographer who had captured life on the streets of Chicago and New York from the 1950s to the 1990s. Thanks to the more than 100,000 photographs Maier captured, she became an icon of street photography.
Hondros is the next documentary that we want to include in this short list. It is directed by Greg Campbell and narrates the life and photographic career of the famous war photographer Chris Hondros, who was assassinated in Libya in 2011.
B-Sides by Elsa Dorfman is another of the documentaries that you cannot miss since it shows the life, work and study of Elsa Dorfman, who is a well-known photographer known for her images captured with a Polaroid.
This great documentary is from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, one of the best-known photographers, film directors and environmental activists. Through this documentary, he intends to mobilize society so that it becomes aware of the planet we live on, that it has limited resources.
With more than 40 years of experience, Salgado shows his best photos of his great works such as Trabajadores, Exodos or Gnesis. Through this sample, the viewer will be able to understand what makes the photographer take those photos.
The first one we want to comment on is the film of The Photographer of Mauthausen since this film about photography is based on real events. Specifically, it tells the story of Francisco Boix, a Spanish Republican fighter and photographer who was interned in the Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II.
David Baile is one of the most influential photographers and fundamentally of the second half of the 20th century. He has written numerous books, documentaries and exhibitions since he has been one of the photographers who has best known how to portray the social and visual changes in photography and fashion during the sixties.
The next photographer we want to recommend is Steve McCurry. This one, known worldwide since he is the author of the photograph The Afghan Girl which appeared in the National Geographic magazine in 1985. As a result, he has become a great icon in the history of photography.
This is an old series by the BBC in 1983 that features interview with then contemporary photographers. Most of them were still alive back then, and contains the photographers themselves or relatives talking about them.
While these documentaries offer insights and information about the photographers and their work, they do not offer a step-by-step framework to do street photography. If you want a method that makes outstanding street photography, check out the Photactic Street Photography Course.
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Our list below contains some real crackers, from Exposing Muybridge (starring Gary Oldman) to the documentary classic Finding Vivian Maier and the all-time great feature City of God. All of them great watches and use the lens of photography to explore wider themes, from global warming to album covers.
What's the Daguerrotype process, other than a great name for a prog band? It was the chemical method developed by French artist and physicist Louis Daguerre, which ultimately became the first commercial photographic process and, you know, pretty much laid the groundwork for 20th century photography. Not bad work for a Monday, as it was on 19 August 1839.
'Exposing Muybridge' assembles a charismatic raft of art historians and Muybridge fans, including the actor Gary Oldman, to bring the cinema pioneer's story to life. There's analysis of Muybridge's landscape photography techniques in comparison to greats like Ansel Adams. But this biography also has enough to impress non-photography fans or anyone who's seen Jordan Peele's Nope, which features 'A Horse in Motion' in its early scenes. The ideal taster for what is surely an inevitable biopic.
Wildlife photography demands serious patience, which some find dull and others see as a magical doorway to philosophical musings about life itself. If you're in the latter camp, you'll love this documentary about the quest of wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and the travel writer Sylvain Tesson to find the rare, and seemingly mythical, Tibetan snow leopard.
It might have Planet Earth-level cinematography, but that's where the similarities end. Instead, the The Velvet Queen marries a slow, meandering pace with a beautiful soundtrack from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to create a hypnotic journey inside the heart of photojournalism.
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