MY PATH TO PHOTOGRAPHIC NARRATIVES
If you’ve browsed the rest of my website at all, you’ll know that I like to share stories. Story is, I think, the most captivating art form of all. Through story we can adopt the perspective of the characters we follow, and empathetically experience what they do as they solve mysteries, have adventures, or overcome challenges. We align our mind with that of a character and escape into the world of the story, in some small way, sharing in their experiences. This sort of mental engagement is something not accomplished to the same degree by art forms without a temporal dimension, say, a singular painting or sculpture or photograph. And because of this mental engagement and potential for empathetic experience and immersion, I prefer story above all other non-temporal art forms, both for consumption, and creation.
Story also has the benefit of being flexible in form. So long as we have character, motivation, and time, a story can be told through text, audio, or visual media, or some combination thereof. In the past, I mostly focused on video, viewing it as the ultimate storytelling medium, combining auditory and visual stimuli with true temporal dimension. However, as the demands of a career in medicine all but forced out consistent engagement in creative interests, video production became increasingly impractical given its time consuming nature. For instance, my most recent film Rim to Rim to Rim: A True Adventure (below), required a little over three hundred hours to make between editing, 3D map creation, voice over, music selection, audio mixing, color correction, and export. And I was only able to start on this feature-length project after a year and a half of working through a backlog of other films ready to be created (e.g. A Journey to Thunder Lake, Exploring Quandary Peak, Below the Rim). Essentially, it became clear that engaging in video production at the level I desired simply wasn’t compatible with the demands of my career. And so, I was left with a sort of void, with no sustainable outlet for visual storytelling.
In pondering how I might continue to engage in some form of visual storytelling, I found myself drifting toward the world of photography. I had done a great deal of photography in the past, both for commercial and personal purposes, but it had never been my preferred creative outlet simply because of the medium’s traditional lack of temporal dimension. A true story unfolds over time, and so, I was left to think about how I might tell stories possessing some temporal dimension using a medium which traditional does not.
The answer to my dilemma was the photographic narrative, which I define as: A sequence of photos deliberately arranged to follow a character, or set of characters, seeking something over time. In retrospect, this idea is comically obvious, and because of this obviousness, after arriving at the idea of photographic narratives I immediately assumed that there would be a large body of work from people who had arrived at the idea long before I had. However, I was quite disappointed to find that, although I certainly wasn’t the first to think of the idea—I found it being discussed on a few web pages and YouTube videos—I had a hard time finding anyone actually putting the concept into action. Most of what I found when searching for “photographic narratives” or “narrative photography”, or “photographic storytelling”, or “storytelling in photography”, were various web pages, videos, photobooks and online courses espousing the ideals of “telling stories with photography”, but using a definition of “story” much different than the one I prefer.
Photographic Narrative
/fōdəˈgrafik nerədiv/
A sequence of photos deliberately arranged to follow a character, or set of characters, seeking something over time.
When I think of a story, I think of those accounts of the experiences of a character or set of characters in search of something over time. I think of the adventures of Captain Nemo and Indiana Jones, the journey of Officer K in Blade Runner 2049, the epic quests of Luke Skywalker. I was frustrated to find that, in the world of photography, the concept of “story” was most often applied to images which stimulate thought, or give some sense of meaning. It was used to refer to images which capture a sense of emotion, usually with elements in the frame arranged in such a way that the minds of viewers would be stimulated to imagine the context in which the image was taken. And these things are wonderful and worthwhile. I deeply enjoy looking at photographs which accomplish these aims. But still, I simply do not think that these aims constitute a story.
My searches for the use of narrative in photography also led to a great many photographic collections which were said to “tell stories”, but in reality were simply various photos all sharing a similar theme like you might find in an art gallery. And of course, various forum and blog posts brought up the notion that photographs had been used to tell stories in magazines and on web pages for decades. However, I think that in these cases, text is more often used to tell the story, while the photographs provide intermittent illustration of that which the text describes. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with art galleries or magazine articles; I enjoy both. My point is not that these things have little merit, but rather, that they aren’t in line with my conceptions of what a true photographic narrative might be.
The intent behind the photos in a photographic narrative is not to create singular beautiful or meaningful images, nor is the series of photos meant to demonstrate some central theme or concept. Capturing photos for a photographic narrative is not the same as capturing scattered snapshots from unconnected moments in time and displaying them interspersed between paragraphs of text on a blog post or magazine article, nor is it synonymous with capturing photos from events with the goal of preserving memories.
In my view, a photographic narrative is something in which the photos tell the story without the need of any accompanying text. The photos are composed primarily to orient the viewer and advance the story, in the same way a film uses establishing shots to give viewers a broad sense of location, before moving onto medium shots and close ups to display the human scale, emotion, and smaller action. Images are captured intentionally for display in a sequence, meant to exist as a part of a whole, each one temporally connected to the previous one, advancing the overall story in a stepwise fashion. The temporal gaps between photos are such that the character’s movement through the narrative could be easily followed, akin to cuts in a film. Too many photos in sequence with little happening between them become monotonous, but too few photos at a time when great change is happening leads to a lost narrative.
After working through my thoughts to create a nuanced understanding of what my photographic narratives would be, I moved on to pondering the optimal mode of distribution of these photographic narratives. And eventually, I settled on the notion that the mode of distribution is relatively flexible. The photos of a photographic narrative might be displayed online in a scrollable gallery, allowing viewers to move through each image at their own pace. They might be displayed in sequence in video format, potentially with accompanying music, voiceover, and sound design. I’ve even toyed with the idea of displaying smaller thumbnail sized images together in a sort of collage, inspired by contact sheets from the heyday of film photography.
And with my vision for the capture and distribution of my version of photographic narratives complete, I felt a sense of catharsis. At a time when I felt a sort of void, having no sustainable outlet for visual storytelling alongside my training and career as a neuroradiologist, this new creative direction reinvigorated my mind. I now have a go-to storytelling medium which I’m excited to develop further over the many years to come. If you’ve made it this far, I applaud your patience, and I deeply appreciate your time in reading about my creative journey. If you’re interested in viewing the products of this creative journey, feel free to browse elsewhere on my website, or head over to my recently created YouTube Channel: The Photographic Narrative. And if you have any of your own photographic narratives to share, I’d love to see them! Feel free to get in touch by email at evansommer@evansommer.com, or leave me a comment on YouTube!