This project requires you to set yourself an assignment and then photograph it. Based on what you have learnt so far, tell a story of any kind, in a set of pictures. It could be something as simple as preparing some food.
Keep in mind that ultimately the success of your narrative will depend on how interesting, attractive and varied your photographs are.
The way you lay out the final selection of photographs is very important.
Before I began this exercise, I decided to study several photographers, who use narrative within their photography.
Jeff Wall:
Wall is a well known Canadian photographer and artist , who has been in the art scene since the early 1970s. I researched his work in the Tate Modern. Wall is well known for his large scale colour transparencies, mounted in wall-hung light boxes. Wall describes his work as being ‘typified by two approaches, which he characterises as either cinematographic or documentary’.
When you first view Wall’s images, they appear to be ‘Snap shots’ and taken at the ‘Right moment’, however, they have all been composed meticulously down to the fine detail, and many of his photographs have needed crew and staging crew in order for him to create his final pieces. They are all narrative images, and they all have some story behind them, some more obvious than others.
Jeff Wall ( Card Players, 2006 )
Gregory Crewdson:
Crewdson is a well known American photographer. He is known for his elaborately staged scenes of American homes and Families. His photographs are very macabre, dramatic, and sometimes feature surreal events or ‘disturbing’ scenes. His work is somewhat similar to Jeff Wall, as he too uses a large crew to help stage the scene before he begins shooting. However, Crewdson’s work is more cinematic than Wall’s. Every photograph has a narrative and tells a story.
Gregory Crewdson (Sunday Roast)
Richard Billingham:
Billingham is an English photographer and artist, who is well known for his photo book ‘Ray’s A Laugh’ which documents the story of his alcoholic father, and ‘obese, heavily tattooed mother’, living in poverty and deprivation. Which Billingham himself grew up in. Unlike Wall and Crewdson’s work, Billingham’s photographs were taken as snap shots, and were not staged. His images were taken using the cheapest 35mm film he could find, thus producing old fashioned, bold, brash coloured, and bad focus images. However, this series of narrative pictures are authentic, and we as the audience are able to be part of his story just by viewing the series of images. His work is very truthful, and we are able to see his parents true personalities.
Ray’s A Laugh (Photo book – 1996)
Exercise:
For this exercise, I decided to create a narrative picture essay of cooking dinner. My Mother gladly offered to let me photograph her whilst she prepared the food. Some of these images have been cropped and enhance using Photoshop Elements 9.
1: Heating the pan, let the butter melt.
2: Time to peel the potatoes
3: Chop, Chop
4: Add some water, so they can boil.
5: Chopping the onions, time for the tears.
6: Onions are ready for frying.
7: Time to open the sweet corn.
8: Washing the Chicken.
9: Cutting the chicken.
10: Mmmm, Barbecue powder…
11: Mix the chicken into the powder
12: The pan is ready for the chicken.
13: Ready to fry….
14: Mix the onions into the barbecue flavour, and fry.
15: Mix in with the chicken.
16: Served, and ready to eat!
17: Too much! Eyes were bigger than my belly…..
18: Washing up is ready……
After this exercise, you then had to lay your final photographs out in order on a piece of paper, and see how they would look. The way you lay out the final selection of photographs is very important. You have to decide if some of them should be small or larger than the others, In order to create a better narrative effect.
I decided to lay mine out on a word document and then took a screen shot in order to post my final lay out on here.
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Chantelle Grace Photography 