Documentary photography is a type of professional photojournalism. But even an amateur or a film student can make a documentary photograph. Documentary photography is more about capturing the truth in the social scenario around us. It is also referred to as Candid photography as the moments captured are true and real. Documentary photography, to a certain extent, captures the real essence of the photographers mind. They depict a certain perspective of the mind of the photographer. These photographs are usually for exhibition in an art gallery or other public forum. Sometimes an organization or company will commission documentary photography of its activities, but the pictures will only be for its private archives. The challenge for a documentary photographer is to make pictures of sensitive scenes and moments without changing them by the presence of a camera. People should not pose for the camera or else it wont be real! The resulting pictures - the subjects facing the camera and seen from "top to toe" - are a vivid historical documentary photography archive, and have established the posed "straight up" as a valid style of documentary picture-making.

Eugene Smith from the U.S and Henry Carier Bresson from Europe are the two most famous documentary photographers. Others being August Sander, Eugene Atget, Jacob Riis and the like. In India Raghubir Singh was one of the finest documentary photographers of the twentieth century.

Documentary photography has risen in recent times because of the rapid growth of the media. The rapid growth of documentary photography represents strong forces at work with a strong creative impulse to bring out the truth to the world. A documentary photograph says so much about the period it was taken in, the background, the prevailing conditions during that time. One has to analyze the picture carefully to gain a complete understanding of all this. These photographs serve as a record of social and political situations with the aim of conveying information.