This week we have been looking more at photo essays and storytelling practices in photography. This is something that I have been looking forward to since to me, storytelling through visual imagery is incredibly significant through human history.

Something that I have taken away from Sebastio Salgado’s documentary, Salt of the Earth, was that there is some auteur theory that goes into how a photo essay is received. For instance, Salgado came from a background of commerce and economics. His photography explores, to an extent, the circle of life and the unity of the earth. He looks at how humans behave with eachother and with nature and our landscapes. He often uses a wide angle lenses to show a sense of depth within an image, and also the grand scale of the earth. Conversely, Vivian Maier was a nanny who looked at suburban and city life, at the individual characters within an urban space.

I will be sending my partner Chynnae hopefully to the office where my sister works as a social media marketing coordinator for a company that imports raw coffee beans. Part of her job is taste testing coffee beans in an intricate process called ‘cupping,’ and I hope that Chynnae finds the process visually interesting for her photo essay.