So much depends upon a stuffed Mickey Mouse lying in the debris of a bombed-out building. In a weekend post on The New York Times site, Opinionator Errol Morris takes on distinctions between art, journalism and propaganda in “It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1).”
Morris looks at (and reposts) a set of images [...]
Tag Archives: visual narratives
Errol Morris in The New York Times on still photography and context
January 4, 2010 – 3:29 pm
Picturing community: an interview with Los Angeles Times’ photographer Francine Orr
December 29, 2009 – 6:20 pm
Photographer Francine Orr had experience reporting on poverty and humanitarian crises around the globe. But while working on “Gimme Shelter,” an audio slide show about L.A.-area homeless people living under a bridge, she found plenty to cover—and plenty to fear—right in her own back yard.
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Orr spoke about the dangers of reporting on mentally ill addicts:
“There’s such a history of random violence along the river. Everything is okay there until it’s not, and sometimes you don’t have warning before it changes. I always had to be aware of who was standing behind me, because I didn’t want someone to smash the back of my head while I was doing my work.”
And on how she views journalists’ responsibilities to subjects, Orr had this to offer:
“I’m a journalist; I’m not a social worker. If I do my job well, I present the story in a truthful manner, in an accurate manner, in a somewhat compassionate manner. I leave it to the viewer, to the reader, to respond. If they feel there is a need or an injustice that requires some action, that’s their role. My role is to present the story.”
Read the full interview.
Intimate journalism: thoughts from a veteran and a beginner (part 2)
December 23, 2009 – 12:42 pm
Storyboard recently talked about visual storytelling and intimacy with two very different journalists: an independent 30-year veteran and a newsroom staff photographer just two years out of graduate school.
Yesterday, we learned how Dallas Morning News reporter and relative newcomer Sonya Hebert immersed herself in the world of end-of-life care and came back with powerful stories. [...]
Intimate journalism: thoughts from a veteran and a beginner (part 1)
December 22, 2009 – 4:43 pm
Storyboard recently talked about visual storytelling and intimacy with two very different journalists: an independent 30-year veteran and a newsroom staff photographer just two years out of graduate school. Tomorrow, we’ll learn what it was like for a seasoned pro to turn a camera on his own family in the midst of crisis. Today, we hear from Sonya Hebert of The Dallas Morning News, who finished a master’s program in visual communications in 2007.
Hebert’s two large-scale efforts to date include a look into adult palliative care at Baylor University and a portrait of a family whose baby lived only five days as a result of a genetic defect. Her video of the baby and his parents pairs beautifully with the print story in “Choosing Thomas,” a multimedia project selected earlier this year as a Notable Narrative.
On trying to shoot intimate pictures of sick adults under less-than-ideal conditions, Hebert says,
“What we saw over and over again was a patient in a bed in a hospital room. Visually it looked all the same, so it required tuning out what I was hearing, and really looking. Thinking, ‘How can I tell this story visually?’ Sometimes it was getting tight in on someone and waiting for them to look up in a certain way in a dark room—being ready for something to happen.”
Later, Hebert struggled with the challenge of making Thomas, a terminally-ill baby, fully human for viewers:
“In the middle of editing, I didn’t feel like the reader could fall in love with Thomas. I was worried about doing a story about a baby to begin with, and he was tougher, because he didn’t do a lot. There were just a few moments where he was like a normal little baby and you could see how cute he was. There’s a clip where he’s sneezing, and TK is saying, ‘Oh, that was my eye!’ It was something to bring a lighter side to the story before we got into the heavy dying part.”
Read the full interview.
Nieman Reports: trauma narratives
December 21, 2009 – 2:17 pm
The Winter 2009 issue of Nieman Reports, “Trauma in the Aftermath,” has a lot to offer storytelling journalists. Richard Mollica of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma warns against “toxic trauma stories.” Former South African Broadcasting Corporation reporter Antjie Krog talks about the danger of interfering with history while covering it.
In a session on visual [...]
Visual narrative and still photography: is a picture worth a thousand words?
December 11, 2009 – 12:59 pm
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 [...]
Comic book news: Joe Sacco draws on history (part 2)
November 13, 2009 – 1:25 pm
Part 2 of a look at graphic narrative journalism
[Part 1 discussed how “comics journalism” rose from the underground and independent comics scene to combine conventions of the traditional comic book with telling personal, true stories.]
The 1990s “indie” comics scene saw two trends. One reflected an almost neurotic drive to get away from the power fantasies of superhero stories. Using a careless graphic style that emphasized the pathologically normal, authors told stories from the point of view of a “defeatist,” in the words of comics artist Joe Sacco.
On the other hand, this was the era in which American non-superhero comics also started engaging with topics bigger than the middle-class suburbs of their creators. Inspiration came from the sudden acceptance of comics in the wake of Art Spiegelman’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Maus, which also built a bridge between the artistic language of the European bande dessinée and its comparatively low-brow American cousin.
Bringing these two trends together, the first issue of Joe Sacco’s Palestine came out in 1993, followed by nine original single comic book issues. Trained as a journalist, Sacco tells the story of the two months he spent in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 1991 and 1992.
Comic book news: a look at graphic narrative journalism (part 1)
November 12, 2009 – 12:42 pm
Print journalism and comic books share a history. Without the former the latter would never have come to be. Journalists have also had their own struggle—the phrases “New Journalism” and “literary journalism” attempt to distinguish what’s used to wrap fish from what’s treasured on a book shelf.
Unlike traditional journalism, literary journalism deals with facts to [...]
Starting with pictures
September 25, 2009 – 10:07 pm
The St. Petersburg Times’ latest narrative project started with photographer John Pendygraft’s wife giving him an assignment. A medical reporter, she had been covering the policy issues of the health care debates, but rarely got more into her pieces than a quote from those struggling with healthcare issues. After meeting a woman who was going through insulin [...]
