Storytelling works very well through photography
In photography it is more difficult to tell a story which is traditionally the domain of the movie. Having said this I will briefly explain in this blog why storytelling could work very well through photography and that photography could even create more fascinating stories for the viewer than a movie. You find this hard to imagine? Read on!
Of course one can create a series of pictures to tell a story and this is the most obvious approach as it mimics the movie somehow by replacing a movie sequence with a series of still images. This has been done successfully by several photographers, particulary in the film noir genre which is building on the dark atmosphere of old black & white criminal and horror movies.
But sometimes it is just enough – or shall I say even more powerful - to utilise the imagination of the viewer… The more questions a picture raises with the viewer the more interesting it becomes and the viewer will spend more time on it than on any picture where the story is obvious to him at first glance, however nicely pictured - but completely told.
A single photograph can achieve this by intentionally leaving things outside of the frame or, even better, by cutting things off at the edges, for example the foot of another person that has obviously just left the scene pictured.
An interesting tension and stimulus for the viewer can also be created by letting a protagonist in the picture look towards an edge of the picture thereby obvious looking to something outside of the frame – to another place that is invisible to the viewer, or into another time. Maybe looking into the past, following the person that has just left the scene? Or towards the future?
Subjects looking off the frame can instill an element of uncertainty into an otherwise rigid scene, they are anyway somehow detached from the captured scene. The viewer is becoming more interested in what they might think and less who they are.
A near miss …
Look at the picture featured in this blog. In this dynamic street scene, are you interested in who these two are? Most likely not. Isn’t it much more intriguing what they might think? Did he notice her at all? Or is he just so absorbed with his thoughts about something completely different? Why is she smiling? About him being so deeply submerged in his thoughts? Or is she smiling because she is just thinking about something else which is funny or pleasant? Did these two recognise at all that they just passed each other?
HGA