Is a photo a record or an expression?

I don't really agree with Mr Harmsen. There is no difference between expressive and documentary when you only consider the photo. Logically, what you do with a photo is always documentary, unlike, for example, making a painting, unless the photographer starts extensively photoshopping, which also happens a lot these days. The difference only comes about in the mind of the viewer. For example, a photo in the newspaper showing an accident can evoke a strongly emotional reaction in the viewer, because they have experienced something like that themselves. And a so-called expressive image can be experienced by the viewer as extremely boring and contrived. Regards, Gerben Ferwerda

Dear Nando and Gerben
Let me also add my two cents to the discussion. The choice Nando puts forward is, in my view, much more complex and dependent on many more factors. Even if you were to choose a recording or as objective a way of capturing things as possible, the camera settings are already subjective factors. Shutter speed and aperture influence the final image, and so do the chosen camera position and focal length of the lens. This is nothing new. In any case, you do not get what your eyes saw and it is not capturing a piece of time unchanged, as Nando says. It becomes even more complex when you know that a memory image in your head is a different image than in a photo. For example, our brains largely determine the perception of color, which can in turn be very different from the Kelvin value the camera used. And there are many more factors.
That a press photo is an impersonal record is also a remarkable claim. The choice of frame, the chosen moment, and the degree of being close up or far away are also aspects of the design that do in fact subjectively influence the representation.
Besides the fact that there are photos that have an expressive or more recording (Read realistic) character, photos can also be directive or formalistic in nature. And that is not all either....

I think there are two types of photographers, i.e. those who record something, which usually happens with a phone, and others who take photographs but add an expression to them. But in practice we often do both forms. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

Dear Nando and Gerben, for me photography is above all enjoying all the interesting and beautiful things you see around you and capture on film. Well, I do also like expression and usually try to include that in my photography. It gives me more freedom compared to a pure (so-called) registration. But both forms have every right to exist.

Dear Nando
How do you do that “expressive” photography ?

I have the same question as Maarten. I really have no idea how. I take photos of things that appeal to me and try to do that as well as technically possible: settings, composition etc. Whether that is documentary or expressive???

Taking a photo is by definition first expressive and only then registration.

after the attacks in Brussels years ago, a nice video by Jimmy Kets was released in which he nicely shows how, as a photographer, you can manipulate reality very easily, and still take a photo that "registers".

https://vimeo.com/155527798

Video showing how recording is actually also an expression of a photographer,, and how easily you can manipulate.

In older books about the photographic profession, a broad three-way division was often used. Photography then has objectives such as; Wanting to inform (holiday photos and journalism, etc), Wanting to persuade (advertising and propaganda), Wanting to express (art and autonomy). Of course, all photos contain the possibility of pursuing personality and beauty, but those three starting points largely determine the choices and possibilities you have as a photographer. Where a journalist must never lie, the advertising photographer says that that is precisely his field, while the artist is mainly concerned with his own soul.