Day at the beach? Family? Baby’s first steps? Missing fathers? Same sex marriages? Sisters? Point & Shoot Cameras?
Continuing on with some more thoughts based on the Gary Winogrand video, I’m wondering if a picture is really worth a thousand words. Gary Windogrand said:
The fact that photographs — they’re mute, they don’t have any narrative ability at all. You know what something looks like, but you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t know whether the hat’s being held or is it being put on her head or taken off her head. From the photograph, you don’t know that. A piece of time and space is well described. But not what is happening.
In one respect, I would say that yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but only in describing how something looks. I would have to agree that you can get little or no story from it. QBP rather solidified this point for me in her comment yesterday where she said:
For me, it depends upon what is presented. I think a photo can be as impactful, if not more, than someone’s writing. I was recently reading a blog where the author had written a series about a farmer who had to close his farm due to the corporate competition. He could no longer keep up. Although the writing was quite impactful, I found myself turning away and skipping over some of the many photos he’d taken to document the event. It was powerful, the sadness and emptiness captured in those photos. Painful.
For me, that ability to hit an emotional nerve with either the reader of the word or the viewer of the photo makes the difference.
–QBP
From what I can infer, she read the article, or at least part of it, then went to the photos. By the simple act of reading the article, or even the title of the article, she had context, was able to gather feelings about the article or situation, then looked at the photographs, which just added additional impact, allowing her to add her own narrative and feelings about the subject. If the pictures of the farmer were not included in the article, I would say that the article would have much less impact, but certainly more impact than photos alone; however, I would say that if the photos were in a spread by themselves, well, they would have just been photos of some farmer and no one would have a clue as to what they meant. Therefore, no narrative ability whatsoever.
I could go back to my photos of the poetry reading. Without the context of the poetry reading, the photos might hold up on their own, but as what? As I write this, I’m hit by another thought. This is probably why I’m not so attracted to photo-only blogs. There’s nothing to go along with the photograph to help me along, to frame it, I suppose. I want context. I can appreciate a pretty picture, or perhaps a disturbing one, as much as the next guy or gal, but give me some words with it and it takes it to a new level!
In the end, I guess that I’d have to agree with Winogrand 100% that photos have no narrative ability by themselves. Probably some of you would disagree. I’d like to hear your take on it. Can a photo stand entirely on its own as a narrative piece? I’m not talking about can a single photo evoke an emotion, I know that it can, but can it tell the entire story? Should it be able to?
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I do think that many pictures are worth a thousand words but not normally enough to tell a story. Some do manage in one image to convey enough information to tell a story.
That is why I believe that galleries require about 10 images, to tell a short story (10,000 words). Where we as artists are going within the context of those images.
Niels Henriksen
For me, this was the strongest point I took away from the video also. (Big surprise) I studied the gent placing the hat on the little girl… or was he just taking it off? As in just placing it on and this is the second half?
But I think that’s the whole point of a photograph and there inlies the art. It makes us use our mind, makes us think, makes us wonder.
I agree with Tom’s point of using our minds and imagination. If it’s photojournalism, then yes, I want to know all the facts so I don’t misinterpret the photos. But if the photo’s an artistic endeavor I don’t need all the facts or answers, I’ll enjoy supplying my own, following the artist/photographers clues, or just be happy left wondering. I’m not the type who requires “all” the answers.
Alone these lines, even non-photo only blogs will often post photos with the text that has little or nothing to do with the written material (I do it). The photo may not even be mentioned.
@Earl: Good point about non-photo only blogs. I know that I do that myself, a lot. The photo will have absolutely nothing to do with the text. I don’t need all of the answers, either, but was speaking probably about journalism and the inability of a photo to tell a complete story. When looking at a picture, too, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!
i suppose it depends what you’re looking to ‘get out of’ any given picture, what function you expect it to fulfil. I’m finally starting to put together my artist statement and I’ve realised that with what I’m doing, I like to leave it open to interpretation. I’m looking for people to make a connection with an image that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with describing a scene, or telling a story, I just want them to feel something – like you do sometimes when you hear a piece of music and it moves you, but you don’t know why – it connects to something deeper down than your verbose brain, and goes straight to where the feelings come from. When you’re in that kind of place, context can be distracting.
This question/discussion has shown up several times in places I visit and it is one I wrestle with regularly. I believe Earl pretty much sums it up about the difference between photojournalism and photos for other reasons. Context is important for somethings but if the image relies more on the words to tell the story then it is an addition to the words and can’t stand alone. In today’s Hi-Tech age it seems that the context makes a lot of fairly mediocre images more significant than they would be without the context. As an example I look to Steve McCurry’s photo Afghan Girl, I don’t need to know the context of where how and why it was made to make the image mean something or tell me a story about her. Would knowing the story behind the image make it have more impact, maybe if you just glance at it instead of really seeing it. Sorry for the rambling.
I think that when we view an image, we fill in context and situation where it is missing and bring some of ourselves to the image. I believe that’s what great photography does, and why images with people in them bring out different emotions in the viewer because of the human context. We might all stand in awe of Ansel’s images of Yosemite, but great street photography can hit us right between the eyes because of the people, whether they be happy or sad. As much as I love landscape photography, the one genre I wish I was much better at was images of people, because the identification is so much more immediate. Paul, so many of your images (especially of late) have people in them and it’s part of why I like them so much.
I think it can cut both ways. Sometimes I see a photograph and it’s more powerful to me before I’ve read any associated text. As others here have mentioned, being able to place it in my own context first, not “pre-placed” from some narrative, often yields quite different interpretations that have no relationship to the photographer’s original intent. That’s pretty cool, when it happens.
Other times, the image doesn’t really mean much to me at all by itself, but by reading the narrative I am brought into the photographer’s frame of reference and can appreciate the photograph more.
Interesting dilemma isn’t it?
@Chris: I’m finding people much more interesting these days. I’ve been out on the street shooting, but think that I want to move more to interiors, especially churches. I’m not a religious person, to be sure, but I do find it fascinating that I find such peace and reverence inside of a church, as many people do. Downtown Charleston is fraught with churches and, as this is a big tourist destination, a lot of them are open through the week for walk-throughs and individual worship. I’d love to photograph an actual service, too.
Can a photo tell an entire story? Depends on the photo and the viewer. I used to show photos to my kids when they were young (before they could read). My son who started to talk at a very young age could invent an entire story from one image that could take him up to an hour to tell. He’s 14 now and he still loves to talk and still has a wild imagination
Sorry. Not very helpful but whatever comments I was going to make has already been made
@Cedric: The exercise that you used to do with your kids is a great exercise to build imagination and story telling ability. It’s obvious that it worked really well for your son. Excellent. I wish that I would have thought of that.
I suppose that there are all sorts of stories that a photo could tell, but only one of them represents what actually happened. Though, in reading through the comments, I’m not really sure if that is important, save for a newspaper article or some based-on-a-true-story journalism. Sometimes it’s nice to make up our own stories.
The excercise that Cedric mentions is a popular one in acting classes and one I used both when acting and teaching. While I hadn’t thought about the exercise in this particular context, it encouraged me to think even more about what photographs can tell us. An image that captures a single moment cannot possibly tell an entire story. What the photograph can do splendidly is stir our imagination to fill in details of the story that we see. That makes photographs incredibly powerful, but it doesn’t mean we can rely on them for important details and context.
I suppose I fall in the disagreement category with Mr. Winogrand’s statement, at least when stated as a blanket statement about photographs in general.
Part of the mystery in some images is that perhaps you don’t know the truthful story or the whole story, but they allow your mind to fill in the blanks. The story can be different from one person to the next. If there is just too much going on to even formulate what is happening, then I would propose that the picture needs a more simplified composition.
I haven’t seen the video, I am just reacting to your quotes from it. A photograph can be so much more than the graphical elements that define an appearance.