This week, Michael Zhang (@PetaPixel) tweeted a link to this striking photo gallery of the Athens riots, which is composed of AP, AFP and Getty images. I was particularly intrigued by the role-reversal in this shot of a policeman as he retaliates.
I would argue that the pictures as a whole, and even some single images, explore the story of the riots. But there is no clear order, no literary arc that moves toward a climax or transformation.
Associated Press
While video tends toward a classic, linear mode of storytelling, still images often work differently. In a prior interview with the Storyboard, Mitch Epstein, a photographer who has also done production design on films such as Salaam Bombay!, said that while photos can be arranged to create a narrative arc, a single photo
“is not the same as literary storytelling… an individual photo can suggest a narrative. It can imply a narrative. They’re better in a way at articulating questions than they are at delivering answers.”
Photojournalists I’ve asked in the past, like Ed Kashi, have said without hesitation that they were storytellers, though Kashi specifically mentioned the importance of accompanying words “to contextualize the images and give a deeper understanding of them.”
Which begs these questions: Can a single photo tell a story? Can a series of photos taken at different points or by different people, as with these shots of the Athens riots, tell a story? And how much context do they need?
One comment
Andrea,
I see still photography existing in this very special nexus between our conscious, reality based perceptions and our unconscious impressionist sense of reality. A single image can tell a story, but one that is open to wide interpretation by each viewer unless there are words to contextualize it. Moreover, a single image will always only tell a slice of reality and most likely be the beginning of inquiry and discovery, not the end point. Maybe in the past when we didn’t have such powerful, multi-faceted media, we relied on and believed that an image delivered the whole truth. We know now that images can lie, be used to manipulate the truth and depending on how they are contextualized, can present different versions of the “truth.”
It is imperative, at least in the context of still images being used in editorial, documentary and journalistic settings, that the words are used to clarify as well as open a dialogue in the viewer’s mind.
This begs the question, or more the need for, a robust teaching of media literacy in the brave new world of digital media. We must come to understand that imagery as information can be great but also can be quite misleading and inadequate to gain a whole perspecitive on a story or issue. I see a still image as an entry point into a story.
Ed Kashi
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[...] Visual narrative and still photography: is a picture worth a … Dec 11, 2009 … “is not the same as literary storytelling… an individual photo can suggest a narrative. … [...]