In this week’s class, we mostly discussed the relationship between photographs and narrative. Photography has a “sheer power of description” ,‘A single photograph can depict a scene with a verisimilitude which pages of written account would still fail to capture. It is this quality which led photography to be first employed for practices like crime scene photography, in place of the unreliable memory and incomplete notes that had previously been relied upon.’ (Bush, 2019) During the meeting, took High Fashion Crime Scenes (2003-2017) by Melanie Pullen and Gregory Crewdson as an example, which is based on vintage crime-scene images Pullen mined from the files of The Los Angeles Police Department and The LA County Coroner’s Office. For my opinion, Pullen’s visual aesthetic is infused with of film noir and the audaciousness of the French New Wave and according to her interview, she was also inspired by her grandmother’s editing eye.These photos are all posed with models for effect, not actual crime scenes, which tend not to care about prettiness or proportion or having the right light. I recall artist and model, Cindy Sherman, who creates similar scenes, where viewers might feel themselves entering a strange, staged scene where things had gone horribly wrong.
Untitled, Cindy Sherman
Through the text, we got a chance to understand the meaning described in the photographs which connect to the aim of today’s class, photographs and narrative. Narratives have several different ways, but when it comes to using photographs to describe something behind those, it seems to be difficult. I think it was hard to share the whole story or emotions to the audience using a few words. But it is worthy to share both photographs and text for them to see if they seek the opportunity to dig in. Which reflects and illustrates the value of sharing photography with other media. We could have more influences than other forms of media.
For the class exercise, I haven’t done Sequencing – Series -Storying before, never tried something narratives. So I Started my story from a pigeon outside my window and followed him downstairs to the garden next to my place. Probably I have done something too obvious and there seemed no chemistry between the photographs. So I considered more about the framing, to figure out a way to tell some meaning behind the photographs, more poetic and more connected. Connecting but not that easy to see leaving the audience a room to discover. Although chasing a pigeon was super fun, I even caught the moment a parrot flew away but it turned out so dark because I didn’t adjust the shutter.
Went back to class, we discussed our photographs and to see what my classmates did for the exercise, I learnt something from that which was I should try more close-up frames or extremely close-up rather than just shoot a wide shot or mid shot although that was good but missing something I assumed. Paying more attention to the details should be my first task. Considering the coming assignment, I still have no ideas but I am thinking to continue what I did for the last assignment. To develop more about emotional photography. About the form, either photo essay or photo book is in my option.