Documentary Photography
Huck’s most popular photo stories of 2017
Picks of the bunch — As the year draws to a close, we collated the best photography pieces of the year – as chosen by readers.
Written by: HUCK HQ
The people and places that make up modern Britain
Town To Town — For his latest project, Scottish photographer Niall McDiarmid spent six years crafting a contemporary portrait of the UK, visiting over 200 towns in the process.
Written by: Niall Flynn
Portraits of US urban disparity, shot 50 years apart
Black and White — Despite being shot almost half a century apart, Matt Black and Elliott Erwitt’s monochromatic photos of the US operate in graphic tandem. Now, for a new Magnum exhibition, they are placed alongside each other.
Written by: HUCK HQ
A photographer's 8,000-mile journey from Cuba to the US
The long route to another life — Photojournalist Lisette Poole spent 51 days documenting two Cuban women's migration to the US. She travelled illegally through 11 countries, via smugglers and roadless jungles, using a point-and-shoot camera when it was too dangerous for the real deal. This isn’t a story she simply observed: it’s an experience she survived.
Written by: Lisette Poole
The vigilantes fighting Myanmar’s heroin epidemic
A dangerous method — A group of Christian activists are taking drastic action to tackle the country’s pervasive drug problem – but are their methods doing more harm than good?
Written by: Josh McDonald
LaToya Ruby Frazier on Gordon Parks' inspiring legacy
Groundbreaking gravitas — As one of the most prominent voices to document American life in the 1950s and ’60s, Gordon Parks used his camera as a ‘weapon’ to fight racism, intolerance and poverty – paving the way for others to blur the line between artist and activist. LaToya Ruby Frazier is determined to further that legacy through social documentary that’s both personal and political.
Written by: LaToya Ruby Frazier, as told to Cian Traynor
Ed Templeton on Larry Clark's renegade style of photography
Kindred spirits — There is a lineage of photographers who shoot to shock, planting themselves in fringe-dwelling scenes with the eye of a lustful voyeur. Larry Clark was never one of them. His photographs of wayward teens bingeing on sex and drugs, and leaving 1960s America aghast, are moments that he lived. It’s in this brutal suburbia, in the faces of strung-out kids, that skateboarder Ed Templeton first realised that his own life could be a muse.
Written by: Ed Templeton
The photographers challenging the way we think about prison
Radical empathy — The US prison system is an overcrowded wasteland of wayward lives. But a handful of photographers, armed with exceptional access, are determined to humanise people shunned by society.
Written by: Pete Brook
The utopian vision of America's forgotten communities
Suburban Shangri-la — Photographer Jason Reblando uncovers one of the most ambitious but overlooked programs in American history: the 'anti-capitalist' neighbourhoods designed to bring people together.
Written by: Cian Traynor
London’s ‘public’ spaces are not as free as they seem
Pivot Points: Stories of Change — Huck photographer Tom Jamieson goes for a wander through the squares of London where the lines between public and private space are starting to blur.
Written by: Tom Jamieson