'Context and Narrative' by Maria Short - notes

Subject

Key questions

• What do you want to say?
• Why communicate your message through photography?
• How do you want to say it?

Message

• Why do I want to photograph this subject? Be passionate about your subject, otherwise your work will lack substance

Don McCullin - Intention

Guardian, May 2010 - Don McCullin describes a seminal moment in his own development during the Biafran Wart in 1969, when he re-discovered his purpose as a war photographer: to highlight the unacceptable, whereas previously his motivation had little to do with changing perceptions: 'I wanted to take good pictures to show other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me'

A grieving woman, Cyprus, Don McCullin

A starving mother and child, Africa, Don McCullin

• What is my relationship with the subject? Be aware that your beliefs and values - as well as limitations of your camera craft - will influence what to communicate

 

Marylyn Silverstone - Portrait of Ourselves

A photograph is a subjective impression. It is what the photographer sees. No matter how hard we try to get into the skin, into the feeling of the subject or situation, however much we empathise, it is still what we see that comes out of our images, it is our reaction to the subject and in the end, the whole corpus of our work becomes a portrait of ourselves

• Clarify your intention by expressing it in a simple sentence, or a few key phrases. Examine your images to see if they achieve that purpose, element by element. See if your statement of intention needs changing. Assess if your images need further work to fit your intention                                                                                                                                                                         

Choice of photography to communicate message

Consider

• Portability or durability of print
• Greater resonance than other media
• Photography's associations with documenting 'objective truth'
• Viewers' other perceptions about communicating via photography
• Impact on behaviour of human subjects of using camera, for which see Laura Pannack's exploration of human reaction to the presence of a camera, below

Human Reaction in the Presence of a Camera - Laura Pannack, Glass
'Many people are anxious when they're about to be photographed...because they fear the camera's disapproval. People want the ideal image; a photograph of themselves looking their best. They feel rebuked when the camera doesn't return an image of themselves as more attractive than they really are'  Susan Sontag

Untitled, Glass, Laura Pannack

Untitled, Glass, Laura Pannack

Untitled, Glass, Laura Pannack

Laura Pannack series, Glass examines the relationship between the camera and subject portraits: 'It relates to my thoughts how people often object to having their portrait taken and how they react when faced with the situation'. She placed a sheet of glass between the camera and her subjects and asked them to close their eyes, so that they could not anticipate when she would take the image. 

Method

• What do I need to show the audience?
• How is that best delivered? 
• Do I need to present the whole subject or can I use inference to imply meaning, to strength message and/or simplify image? 
• How important is location, time of day, quality of light and equipment to your intention?
• What other practical considerations apply? Format? Image quality? Frame shape? 
• How and where image will be physically seen? 
• Any references to other established styles of photography?

Audience

Usually impossible to predict how an audience will receive an image but ingredients of success include:

• Sincerity and clarity of your intention
• Finely developed gut feel for others' perceptions
• Technical quality of image (a well executed print makes it easier for the viewer to engage fully with the subject and explore the concept)

Presentation

• The environment where the viewer sees the image often determines how it will be interpreted
• Also audience needs signals to interpret how a set of images relate to one another. 
• Size, shape and ordering are common ways of sending these signals.
• 2 important ways of establishing this relationship: (a) typology/ seriality and (b) narratives.

Typology/seriality

Typology uses a set of images of subjects (or style of composition) that belong to the same types or class, e.g. Laura Pannack's images above, Bernd and Hilla Becher's images of industrial buildings and structures. This allows audience to see both similarities and differences between items in the set.

Typology - Bernd and Hilla Becher's Buildings
They photographed industrial buildings over a period of 40 years, starting 
in 1959. Their purpose was to make meticulous records of industrial 
structures, neither to glorify industry nor to point out its dangers and costs.

Industrial Structures, Bernd and Hilla Becher

Narrative

What is narrative in photography?

• The purpose of narrative is to convey meaning of images to an audience, a thread to allow viewers to grasp the concept.
• Therefore, important to be clear about the purpose of each project and aware of narrative devices and their implications.
• It can be conveyed as a set of images or in a single image

Types of narrative, as a set of images

Linear

• Beginning, middle and end (mostly, a time series for an event)
• Establishment, development, conclusion, or 
• Situation, complication, solution

Linear narrative - José Navarro, Trashumantes 

Documents a 3 week, 250 mile journey taken by semi-nomadic shepherds 

with their flock of 5,000 sheep, a 1,000 year tradition that is both

cost efficient and environmentally friendly compared with the alternative 

of road transport. This sequential story dictated by the event itself.

Some issues with this approach to consider:

• How much control over the order in which images are seen?
• Will audience see all the images at once?
• Will audience follow identified sequence?
• Will some images take greater prominence than others?
• Does story need a 'lead' picture that sums up intention?

Aesthetic continuity 

• Images in the set share a common feature(s) in their composition, e.g. framing, lighting, colour, tonal values - see Jill Cole's Birds

Aesthetic Continuity - Jill Cole, Birds
Created over an 18 month period, this is a series of images that show birds 
captured in nets on a nature reserve for ringing as part of a programme 
of scientific research. The images are composed - lighting, colour, tonal range - 
so that they have a high level of continuity between them. 

Visual punctuation

• Uses various techniques: (a) size of images - to change the pace of the narrative, create emphasis or show relative importance, (b) embeds images in small sets in a larger body of work - to show logical structure, (c) juxtaposes images - to present an argument or raise a question

Narrative, in a single image
The elements of the narrative appear at the moment of photographing, raising the following questions:

• What is this a picture of?
• What is happening?
• What is the relevance of the empty space, dark sky or colour of the carpet? 

Ways of creating a story in a single image include (a) photojournalism (event creates the opportunity for the photographer to take the image at the decisive moment, (b) montage and (c) still life

Narrative in photojournalism

Don McCullin
(see commentary above)

Starving 9 year old Ibo albino boy
Biafra, 1969

 

Paul Hansen

(Winner World Photo Press, 2013)

Bodies of 2 year old Sujhaid Hijazi and his 4 year old
elder brother, Muhammad are carried by their uncles to
the mosque for their funeral in Gaza City

Narrative through montage - Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler works in media including video, photography,
installation, performance, photo-text and critical writing.
Her work addresses social life and the public sphere, often staking out
feminist and anti-war positions, including her best known work:
a series of photomontages Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful
(1967 - 72), which set war scenes against images of
domestic comfort and high design.  

Cleaning The Drapes, from series
Bringing The War Home

Photo Op, from series
Bringing The War Home

Narrative in still life - Gregory Crewsdson

Crewsdon produces expensive and elaborately staged surreal scenes of 
US homes and neighbourhoods. The sets are constructed with elaborate detail, 
hinting at the longings and malaise of suburban America. 

Signs and symbols

This links to AoP's exercise on Symbols 5.2 (b)

Overview

• Semiotics is the study of signs and is used in several fields, like linguistics, as well as the visual arts
• Semiotics recognises 3 types of representation or 'sign': icon, index and symbol (see below)
• Signs can be used to enrich visual communication. Yet to do so successfully requires sufficient understanding of the social, cultural and political context in which they have meaning for viewers. When successful they can provide a coherent thread for a series of images in various ways: pacing, sequencing, raising questions, adding meaning.
• Signs are part of daily life (2 exercises to illustrate: (a) spend 20 minutes walking around your own home identifying symbols, icons and indexes that you encounter, (b) repeat exercise in a familiar surrounding, like a journey to work)

Icon

• The icon connects to what it represents by likeness, i.e. it shares some of the qualities (e.g. physical or behavioural) of the original, e.g. signage on toilet doors, a caricature, imitative gestures, a scale model, metaphors

Index

• The index connects to what it represents directly either physically or by cause, e.g. an arrow used to point towards a building exit, smoke to denote fire hazard, footprints for footsteps. The link is either observed or inferred. Photographs are indices: they are a trace of the original subject. The nature of this relationship, between subject and how the image represents it, is one of the foundations of critical analysis of photographs.

Symbol

• The symbol connects to what it represents by interpretative habit, assumption or rule, independently of how or where it appears. The relationship must be learnt, e.g. Morse Code, language, traffic lights . See separate post: The Spectre of Impossible Desire, Emma Blaney

Use of symbolism - The Americans, Robert Frank

Robert Frank's work is often cited as an example of photography laden with

symbolism, to provide a meaning that goes beyond just recording the scene. 

The Americans contains many symbols of American life, like the stars and stripes, 

juke boxes, the car, the diner, the bar, rodeo, the movie, parades, political rally

The Candy Store

The Drive-in Movie

The Political Rally

The Elevator

The Navy Recruiting Office

The Parade

Key questions for use of signs in imagery

• What role should they play in your work?
• How will you introduce your audience to the meaning of your sign?
• Are you expecting viewers to have prior knowledge of the meaning of your sign?
• Are you using a new twist on an existing sign?
• Does the sign operate like a recurring motif, denoting a particular mood or message?
• Are juxtaposing the sign in relation to other elements of the image? Does this work?

 Text

• Captions, titles, essays and accompanying editorial text help viewers place an image, by giving it context
• Photographer must consider the relationship between the image and its accompanying text, without either compensating for any weakness in the other (i.e. if the photo needs a lot of supporting text to explain it, is the image doing its job properly?)
• Options for text include; (a) a summary or postscript that describes the intent that embraces all the images in the set, (b) simple captions to add context not evident from the image, (c) a literary cross-reference that provides some context, and (d) use of text within the image itself