“Having a story to tell and willingness to tell it, is nothing – a total zero… ability to do it is much more important and valuable…”
this is just a part of a very provocative, and soon to be very controversial comment, by one of our readers , Anthony RZ , under our most recent multimedia essay by Kerry Payne…so provocative, that i felt it should be right out here for general discussion…why? because it is one of the most important discussions in photography today in my view…..this topic has been discussed a bit before here on Burn and on my previous Road Trips blog, but i do not think it can ever be thought about enough…..please read the entire comment by Anthony…it will definitely make you jump one way or the other….
the discussion here should not be to single out Kerry who obviously has a heartfelt story to tell and who will most likely be moved to tears by the comment of Anthony….any form of diplomacy/sensitivity was clearly not his intent…however, he was honestly direct…..i do not want to fuel that fire for its own sake, yet at the same time with passions now raw among us and surely on full alert, this seems like a good time for more of a general discussion about content and form …about stories to tell….about the ability to tell them….about storytelling and storytellers….and clearly about the medium itself…and even about the purity of still photography and it’s morphing into multimedia….
obviously we all want a great story, brilliantly told…but, the question here put forth by Anthony is of priorities….
so, what do you think?
what is most important for you as a viewer: the story or the ability to tell it ?
ALL,
I was on the local evening news tonight, with a profile piece on the rock photography camp I taught this summer. I hate watching/hearing myself but thought you might all enjoy it. :) It was a great experience teaching these kids and I guess I will be doing it again next year.
Best,
Charles
http://www.king5.com/video?id=102010408&sec=549122
That’s pretty damn cool Charles! :-)
Charles
cool! :)
Charles, hi, cool!! Thanks for sharing, nice!
Hey Charles
Very cool.
Looks like you, DAH and myself all part our hair the same way.
GORDON,
Now that makes me smile! :)
CP
Jeez Charles, I had a mental picture of you looking like Kurt Cobain. Now I see you’re more the Michael Stipe type. Anyway, looks like a great thing to do. Congrats. And that was a pretty well shot and edited piece for local news. That producer might go places.
Charles…super gongrats
“photography is about…. Photography”. Yep! :-)
Yes, congrats, and bravo, it’s not often that photography, the idea of, makes it in the News.
BUMP!
“”"”what is most important for you as a viewer: the story or the ability to tell it ?”"”"
This one has been gnawing away at me for a while.
You see from where I stand its neither of the above.
It always has to be the power of the image(s).
Dont care about the story.
Dont care about the who what why or when.
When I look at fashion work I dont give a fig what its selling…just whether the image holds up unsupported.
when I look at documentary work… I dont care at all about the story behind the imagery,just whether the images hit that spot that makes you go WOW!
Music work just the same. There are killer shots I love from the fifties/sixties where I have no clue who the artist is.(nor care)..and yet the pictures fly.
Salgado, McCullen, Griffiths…can look at their work all day long without EVER needing to know the whatwherewhenhow of them.
I believe the best of images are entities in themselves. They are strong enough to have their own gravity field.
Whether this was ever intentional on the part of the photographer is not a particular concern either.
The ownership of an image is always with the viewer at the moment of viewing. And therefore the right to interpret it as they wish, with or without supporting materials/information.
So I would like to add a third category to what is important (to some)…The Image as a stand alone ‘whole’.
A minority postion I am sure, but surely not a unique one.(and just a position, not a solid fact)
As photographers we are surely engaged in storytelling for the most part…but can the image itself not be the story, with a new twist in the telling for every new viewer?
Seperate from the surrounding scaffold of words and facts and ‘concrete’ information?
I would say that it can, and does, at least for me.
interested if i stand alone here :)
john
JOHNG…amazing standing point…!!!
If you don’t wanna stand alone though…
I can copy and paste …you…
We are All in the …letter to friends…:))))))
John, I’m almost with you. I posted this under Dany’s essay
“Danny’s photographs are a good example of how a photograph can deliver information and at the same time transcend the message and become an object in its own right. When this happens you catch yourself thinking “wow, great photograph!” and then realise that the great photograph (in terms of lighting, composition etc.) depicts horror or despair. It’s quite unsettling but reinforces the power of the message.
I really want as much information as possible … “Input! Input! … but agree that a photograph can have a life of it’s own, I’m thinking of the photograph by Philip Jones Griffiths showing a Viet-Cong soldier in Vietnam who had been fighting for (as I remember) days with a bowl tied to his burst abdomen after being wounded. Such a wound induces thirst but one marine says that the soldier can drink paddy water. Another says that anyone who can fight with such a wound can drink out of my canteen and I’d be proud of it. The scene was copied in the film Apocalypse Now but, as Marlon Brando goes to give the man a drink someone shouts “Surf’s Up!” and he turns, spilling the water! You know the scene.
Another example is the photograph of the traumatised marine used as backdrop in some recent Wikileaks announcements. Taken by Don McCullin in Vietnam, it is now being used to illustrate the effect of war, but the war being debated is Afghanistan; whereas I know that the photograph comes from Vietnam, but many T.V. viewers won’t. So information is important to me as it expands my understanding but, as historical documents, I’d bet that the photographs have a longer life that the words associated with them.
Mike.
John G:
agree completely……
the image IS the story…period….
just as the word IS the story…
as much as i try to write about the pictures/stories here, in the end, the images are what matter….my own photographic work is defined by that too…
the only disagreement i have is that, for me, the SINGLE picture (in the context of a ‘story’) is NOT enough for me….i don’t give a rat’s arse (in my own work) if every photograph is good…i string pictures together (some, i trust, good, some not) to make one version of one picture: that is the story’s picture…
when i published Bones here i think it was 68 pictures…maybe 3 or 4 interesting photographs, but for me it was their cumulative bond that made up 1 visual picture…the story…well, that always was something private and confused/angered/bored a lot of commentators, and that is ok…
i do not want photographs to illustrate a story….
i want the pictures TO BE the story….whatever that story means (or does not) to the viewer
because ALL STORIES ARE THE SAME STORY….
just as all our lives’ stories are the same stories, only the details are particular….
and they all end the same, no matter the detail…
no getting around that…
John,
I stand with you up to a point.
When I first look at any given picture, my initial reaction is just like yours.
It either works on its own, or it doesn’t.
But (and this is a big but) when I learn background information about the conditions under which the picture was created, the photographer’s intentions, or when I get to see more work of the same photographer or of the same subject matter, this information does in fact alter (even if a tiny bit) my first reaction to the work.
If all stories are the same stories, then it seems to me that we can save ourselves a lot of time and effort by just reading the dictionary from beginning to end. That way we’ve read all the stories before they turn into stories and so we can go spend our time doing something productive, like watching nature documentaries on Animal Planet or do an in-depth and scholarly analysis of Hungarian porn sites. And why are we back to this thread, I wonder?