Dec. 17, 2000 — Documentary photography is a visual form both openly admired and occasionally disparaged in the fine arts community.

Art schools can often put peculiar notions into students' heads. So it is with documentary photography, which some "trendy" schools have recently chosen to malign as an unworthy endeavor for a fine art photographer.

Utter rubbish.

Some of our most creative and innovative photographers have been documentarians, capturing "moments in the life" of sharecroppers, skyscrapers, soldiers, starlets and suburbanites, informing, awing and entertaining us in the process.

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