Reading the post called Photography and Narrative (part 1) on Conscientious Photography magazine it starts the post with “I often find the terms Narrative, Story, Plot, and Structure to be used interchangeably (on blogs, in articles, tweeted, and talked about),” writes Ingrid Sundberg, “and personally, much confusion has ensued as a result.” (Jörg Colberg. 2021. Photography and Narrative (part 1) | Conscientious Photography Magazine. [ONLINE] Available at: https://cphmag.com/narrative-1/. [Accessed 06 January 2021]) This statement will apply to photographers when they are attempting to work on a photobook. Also most photographers approach these terms. Photographers would argue over the different meanings of these terms. Photographers can get confused about the differences between the terms. For example photographers can get confused on the terms of narrative and story. As they would usually mistake these terms for the other. We all know or think that we know what a story and a narrative is? So according to Dictionary.com, the definition of narrative can be:
“1. a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious.”
“2. a book, literary work, etc., containing such a story.”
“3. the art, technique, or process of narrating, or of telling a story”
http://www.dictionary.com. 2021. Narrative | Definition of Narrative at Dictionary.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/narrative?s=t. [Accessed 06 January 2021].
All of these three options of the definition of narrative aren’t really the same at all. With a photobook story it isn’t the same as a book itself, and those two are not the way that a story is being told. So many photographers use the term narrative in the sense of it being the same as a story (option 1) however what they mean is that it is the way that the story is being told (option 3). Many photographers don’t realise that there is a difference, much fretting about the story itself can happen. A question that photographers have to ask themselves is “does my book have a story?” Obviously it doesn’t have a story however it can have a story as well. However if it doesn’t have a story it will have construction and it will still have a narrative. This is because it will have a set of photographs that are being presented in a very specific way. As there is an edit, a sequence, and very specific decisions about the design and production were being made. The edit and the sequence (and to a lesser extent the design and production) form a specific narrative that might or might not produce or allude to a story. So how to approach this then? I would suggest taking the terms of narrative and story as meaning different things. Photographers will have so much to gain from following this approach since easily most photobooks don’t necessarily have a very specific story. These photobooks are clearly about something. If your photobook doesn’t have a story but has a more of a general idea or some larger theme that they are aiming to convey, then you will need to figure out how to do that. Photobooks tend to conflate what in reality often are very different.
The Photography and Narrative (part 1) compares Laia Abril‘s The Epilogue with Awoiska van der Molen‘s Sequester photobooks. These photobooks operate in very different ways even though on the surface. They’re both examples of contemporary photobooks. Photographers need to understand how photobooks operate and not just know about as many books as possible. Photographers will need to figure out which type that they might apply to the group of pictures in question. So photographers will need the term narrative as this is where narrative comes into. There is a variety of different narratives. As there is staged-narrative photography and this is where images are created (staged) purposefully with the idea of narrative in mind. A photographer who uses staged narrative is Gregory Crewdson. With every photograph, these pictures depict the event. Other photographs are intended to be very specifically allude to a story that we are familiar with. The Cathedral of the Pines series that Gregory Crewdson has done, Lynchian sense of psychological comfort and ennui of American life as we don’t know why are these people looking the way they look however we do have some idea, even though the specifics of our ideas may be quite different. In a photograph there are events depicted, and that the event alludes to a larger story it is part of. In Ingrid Sundberg’s words, “these artworks are considered narrative because they recall a story through association.” This is interesting because the photographer will have to get the association right (otherwise, it wouldn’t qualify as staged-narrative any longer). In this post Ingrid Sundberg writes “Herein lies the truth of narrative” and “it can be a story but it does not have to be. A narrative is about story, and creates connections to story and storytelling but does not in and of itself have to be a story.” The last phrase is supremely important for photography and this is because it defines the distinction between narrative and story. Also it helps to expand the discussion of staged-narrative photographs to many other types of pictures. All photographs allude to some sort of story however it is vague it might actually be. Staged-narrative photography only attempts to make the allusion as obvious and strict as possible, following conventions that for hundreds of years have served painters well. The idea of photographs alluding to stories lies behind as “a photograph is worth a thousand words,” or the various ideas that photographs operate like poems, say. Whichever way of talking about this you might prefer, photographs are not really entities of their own. Instead the photographs point at something else, whether that something else is a story, a feeling, an idea, or simply its maker’s expression to affirm her or his presence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
WEBSITES:
Jörg Colberg. 2021. Photography and Narrative (part 1) | Conscientious Photography Magazine. [ONLINE] Available at: https://cphmag.com/narrative-1/. [Accessed 06 January 2021]
http://www.dictionary.com. 2021. Narrative | Definition of Narrative at Dictionary.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/narrative?s=t. [Accessed 06 January 2021].
Kathryn Salsbury photography 