Social documentary photography is unique and powerful form of cultural expression. Recently, while preparing a lecture for students on organizing a documentary photography project, I discovered J. Ruth Gendler's "The book of qualities." This is a small book that wouldn't come to mind when thinking about photography for most people, but what it does is provide inspiration, especially when students are beginning to examine some of their preconceptions, perferences, prejudices, and presuppostions about the role of photography in society.
Gendler lists 99, mostly human, qualities and writes a bit of prose about each one. In selecting a topic or subject of a documentary work we begin by considering three possible obstacles to following through with a project. The three aspects we touch on are access, time, and motivation/organization.
Once we have worked through the access and time constraints of the projects, we then begin to assign some of the qualities, found in the book, to the subject. For example, each photographer associates what they think may represent the qualities they will encounter with their subjects. A student working on a project about a nursing students may examine such qualities or conditions such as anxiety, competition, intensity, confidence, and compassion as a starting point. As the project begins in earnest, these qualities are looked for in the editing process and used to keep the work focused.
The central idea to this exercise is to help students examine some of the cultural and social understandings they hold toward others.