Candid photography can be traced back to the early days of photography. For example, back in the 1850s, archaeologist John Beasly Greene travelled to Egypt and Nubia to photograph the ruins in the area and later the likes of Alfred Stieglitz developed a more candid style of documenting the age of electricity, the automobile and the telephone around the beginning of the 20th century.
Documentary wedding photography really began to become more popular in the late 1990s when photographers were no longer restricted to the 24 frames they had on a roll of film. Given a DSLR and a 2GB memory card all of a sudden photographers could take a hundred or so photos plus they can even view and delete images as they go rather than having to wait for them to be developed. This allowed them to drastically change their approach and photograph what actually happens from the bride getting ready through to first dance and beyond.
Twenty to twenty five years later, documentary wedding photography has become the contemporary style of photography with sites like This is Reportage and Fearless Photographers demonstrating the genre’s increased popularity.