Do pictures tell stories?

anjoca76 said:
Winogrand is one of my favorites, but in every interview I've read or heard, he was combative. If he was asked if the sky was blue, he'd say yellow, or insist there wasn't a sky at all. So of course he would never say a picture told a story.
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Did you see the piece I posted? He said exactly what I believe to be true when discussing a single photograph. He is very consistent with this and shows up in many interviews and in some of his writings.
 
gns said:
I think we are all agreeing on a lot. Maybe just not on the definition of a story.
Of course, photographs may elicit or evoke many things in a viewer. To me, that is not telling a story. If I place a pencil eraser in front of someone, it may trigger all kinds of memories or imaginations. But the eraser is not telling a story.
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Exactly!!!!
 
gns said:
I think we are all agreeing on a lot. Maybe just not on the definition of a story.
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We all have a pretty good idea of what a "story" is, but a common misapprehension is the failure to comprehend that a story is far more encompassing than the simple narrative in a typical novel or film spoon fed to us by the author or director. Verstraten in "Film Narratology" is far more concise, and represents the concept of the story or the narrative as widely understand in cultural theory:

I use the representation of a (perceptible) temporal development as the basic definition of a story. A transition from one situation to another takes place ... [T]emporality can be 'read' in, for instance, paintings. In Rembrandt's work, the depicted scenes often suggest a story by means of the viewing directions and facial expressions of the characters. In Susanna and the Elders, for example, we see how Susanna is being watched by the elders while she seems to turn to the viewer for 'protection.' The painting shows a moment 'frozen' in time while simultaneously revealing interaction, both between the characters and between the characters and the viewer. Even non-figurative paintings can be narrative. The wild brush strokes of abstract expressionist action painters like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock 'narrate' the creative process: their fierce painting techniques seem to imply movement. This movement points to a certain temporal order that can be reconstructed by 'reading' the painting.
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Verstraten is talking about painting, but the above applies equally to photographs. As he points out, even abstract paintings (and by analogy, photographs) tell a story.
 
Picture in which there is a plot, a history. It may be clear, but may have a second-guessing. The history of this action in time. A photograph can tell.
* If it can be seen and read by one photo - it's a masterpiece.
 
You guys can all keep trying to tell stories (which I believe can't be done in a single photograph) I will keep trying to find moments when visual elements all come together to make a photograph.

"Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface" - Garry Winogrand
 
airfrogusmc said:
You guys can all keep trying to tell stories (which I believe can't be done in a single photograph) I will keep trying to find moments when visual elements all come together to make a photograph.

"Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface" - Garry Winogrand
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You choose to believe what Winogrand says he believes. I'll believe what others have illustrated. Including my own direct experience.

Cheers,

R.
 
I admire Winogrand's photographs, but just because he said something doesn't make it gospel. I like to think for myself.
 
anjoca76 said:
I admire Winogrand's photographs, but just because he said something doesn't make it gospel. I like to think for myself.
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I believed it before I read what he said and he certainly has more credibility than i do. It just happens to be exactly in line with my beliefs.
 
A friend of mine was telling me a story, where a mother was dragging his son every year on his birthday in the local photo studio to have his portrait taken. After let say 20 years the son start to resist as he didn't liked the way he looked on these photos.
After his mother was gone he realized when looking at those pictures that was never important the way he looked, but through the that process he will always remember his mom...

My point is, pictures can tell stories, if not to the viewer, they tell it to the author. The whole process of taking a picture is a story of itself.
 
Roger Hicks said:
You choose to believe what Winogrand says he believes. I'll believe what others have illustrated. Including my own direct experience.

Cheers,

R.
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And I believe my direct experiences which tells me its a myth.

Shameless plug and we can discuss over some wine and cheese in person.
FleetingMomentsPostcard_zps43ab5ccc.jpg
 
History-story.
* Example: - "He lived ..!" Or: - "He lived well." And it is: - He liked to live well. "
* Photography can tell this. Picture can tell more.
 
taskoni said:
A friend of mine was telling me a story, where a mother was dragging his son every year on his birthday in the local photo studio to have his portrait taken. After let say 20 years the son start to resist as he didn't liked the way he looked on these photos.
After his mother was gone he realized when looking at those pictures that was never important the way he looked, but through the that process he will always remember his mom...

My point is, pictures can tell stories, if not to the viewer, they tell it to the author. The whole process of taking a picture is a story of itself.
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You are talking about an experience and a story outside the single photograph. If a single photograph could tell a story there would be no need for captions in newspapers or documentary projects or a series of photographs for that matter. If one photograph could do it only one would be necessary.
 
serg-k3 said:
History-story.
* Example: - "He lived ..!" Or: - "He lived well." And it is: - He liked to live well. "
* Photography can tell this. Picture can tell more.
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I would argue that the photograph can show an image that a person then tells the story drawn from personal experience not the photograph. The photograph is showing you something the way it looks to a camera.
 
airfrogusmc said:
You are talking about an experience and a story outside the single photograph. If a single photograph could tell a story there would be no need for captions in newspapers or documentary projects or a series of photographs for that matter. If one photograph could do it only one would be necessary.
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Well, you are talking about quantity and missing the point.
If you are not able to get a story seeing only one picture of (let say) a skinny child dead from huger in the African desert I don't know what more to say. May be you need a photo essay to get it, we are all different.

Goodnight.

Regards,

Boris
 
airfrogusmc said:
I would argue that the photograph can show an image that a person then tells the story drawn from personal experience not the photograph. The photograph is showing you something the way it looks to a camera.
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Can't argue with that. And I don't disagree with Winogrand's comment that photographs are a particular type of picture.

But what you say applies to anything that tells a story (which is everything touched by the hand of man). Take someone's diary: that tells a true story, but a reader can only interpret it through their own experience of life - "I would argue that [a diary] can [create] an image that a person then tells the story drawn from personal experience not the [diary].

Nothing - no documentary, no book, no film, no photograph - can ever impart objective truth: all stories are "drawn from personal experience". The fact that some media - like photographs - are more shadowy and ambiguous in their story-telling than other forms of media - like literature - that can impart narrative more coherently is neither here nor there...

A photograph is a very complex cultural object, and dismissing it as essentially a pleasing pattern and confluence of form (however skilful their capture) does it an injustice. A photograph can be taken for all sorts of reasons - and "to see something the way it looks to a camera" is as good a reason as any (and better than some!). But once taken, it doesn't exist in a vacuum - it becomes connected to all kinds of meanings and stories: for example, it tells the story of the photographer (where and when they were at the time of the image, what they were doing, and often a lot more); it tells us about the subject (the people and the place depicted, and the time); it tells us about culture in the present (fashions, attitudes, cultural groups) and in the past (how things have changed - e.g. looking at a photograph of a smoke-filled bar while sitting in a cigarette-free pub tells the story of changing attitudes to tobacco)...

All these individual narratives knit together into an overarching story told by the photograph - a story inevitably different for each viewer (just as readers of a novel will experience its story differently).

Winogrand may have been disinterested - as are you - in the story-telling potential of a photograph, but it cannot be denied that photographs do indeed tell stories.
 
RichC said:
Can't argue with that. And I don't disagree with Winogrand's comment that photographs are a particular type of picture.

But what you say applies to anything that tells a story (which is everything touched by the hand of man). Take someone's diary: that tells a true story, but a reader can only interpret it through their own experience of life - "I would argue that [a diary] can [create] an image that a person then tells the story drawn from personal experience not the [diary].

Nothing - no documentary, no book, no film, no photograph - can ever impart objective truth: all stories are "drawn from personal experience". The fact that some media - like photographs - are more shadowy and ambiguous in their story-telling than other forms of media - like literature - that can impart narrative more coherently is neither here nor there...

A photograph is a very complex cultural object, and dismissing it as essentially a pleasing pattern and confluence of form (however skilful their capture) does it an injustice. A photograph can be taken for all sorts of reasons - and "to see something the way it looks to a camera" is as good a reason as any (and better than some!). But once taken, it doesn't exist in a vacuum - it becomes connected to all kinds of meanings and stories: for example, it tells the story of the photographer (where and when they were at the time of the image, what they were doing, and often a lot more); it tells us about the subject (the people and the place depicted, and the time); it tells us about culture in the present (fashions, attitudes, cultural groups) and in the past (how things have changed - e.g. looking at a photograph of a smoke-filled bar while sitting in a cigarette-free pub tells the story of changing attitudes to tobacco)...

All these individual narratives knit together into an overarching story told by the photograph - a story inevitably different for each viewer (just as readers of a novel will experience its story differently).

Winogrand may have been disinterested - as are you - in the story-telling potential of a photograph, but it cannot be denied that photographs do indeed tell stories.
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But Rich its not the photograph telling it its the viewer. Thats why different people can come away with many different interpretations of what they saw. Its the people that tell the story by bringing their own experience to the table. The photograph is just a two dimensional illusion of reality.
 
taskoni said:
Well, you are talking about quantity and missing the point.
If you are not able to get a story seeing only one picture of (let say) a skinny child dead from huger in the African desert I don't know what more to say. May be you need a photo essay to get it, we are all different.

Goodnight.

Regards,

Boris
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I'm afraid I understand the point perfectly ;)
 
RichC said:
it tells the story of the photographer (where and when they were at the time of the image, what they were doing, and often a lot more); it tells us about the subject (the people and the place depicted, and the time); it tells us about culture in the present (fashions, attitudes, cultural groups) and in the past (how things have changed - e.g. looking at a photograph of a smoke-filled bar while sitting in a cigarette-free pub tells the story of changing attitudes to tobacco)...
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It's not telling us anything in my opinion, it's simply showing us. The story we derive, originates between our ears.
 
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