Do pictures tell stories?

Do pictures tell stories, or are they simply a moment frozen?

I think that frozen moment is already story. So what picture do? It's depend on you ;)
 
This one does. :D

chapter-3-22-23.jpg
 
RichC said:
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:

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.
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I hadn't heard of Verstraten before. Had to look him up. I don't find anything to disagree with in the passage you quote, but still feel there is enough of a difference between an actual narrative and a "suggested" or "read-in" (his words) one to warrant a distinction.

I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea that photographs imply, suggest, evoke a great deal.

Many here (and on another thread spawned by this one) seem to equate being told a story with imagining or creating one themselves. I would say there is a fundamental difference between the two. One is something you make up in your own head while the other allows you a glimpse into someone else's head.
 
gns said:
I hadn't heard of Verstraten before. Had to look him up. I don't find anything to disagree with in the passage you quote, but still feel there is enough of a difference between an actual narrative and a "suggested" or "read-in" (his words) one to warrant a distinction.

I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea that photographs imply, suggest, evoke a great deal.

Many here (and on another thread spawned by this one) seem to equate being told a story with imagining or creating one themselves. I would say there is a fundamental difference between the two. One is something you make up in your own head while the other allows you a glimpse into someone else's head.
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You are so right and if it were the photograph telling the story and not the individual that is viewing the photo then we wouldn't have some many varied interpretations on the same image. Each individuals own imagination tells the story and thats based on their own culture and life experiences. A great photograph asks questions, makes us think and can in its strongest terms can create change but a single photograph does not tell a story.
 
gns said:
Many here (and on another thread spawned by this one) seem to equate being told a story with imagining or creating one themselves. I would say there is a fundamental difference between the two. One is something you make up in your own head while the other allows you a glimpse into someone else's head.
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You can't separate the two - they're just part of a continuum we call "a story". A story is catalysed by any man-made object - a photograph, a novel, a knife - and we construct a narrative from what our senses take in: the connections between the parts of the object: from the object itself - yellowing of a photograph, the inscription from a lover on the book, its smell; from the picture - the expressions on faces, the type of dress, its blur and slant implying a quickly grabbed snap.

Your implication is that a story is a narrative in which the creator's intent is communicated unambiguously. There is no such thing; it cannot exist. Everything we encounter is coloured by our individual perceptions and experiences.

Let's take the novel - the classic "story". No piece of literature ever created is understood in precisely the same way by different people: however simple and clear the writing, a novel will tell a different story to each of us - we may well agree on a basic plot, but we will be less or more sympathetic to different characters, interpret actions in different ways, and an event may resonate with poignancy or pass unnoticed. Every novel thus tells a multitude of different stories: a different one for each person, and varying even when read at different times by the same person: think of a book that you read when younger that seemed entirely different when read again years later.

Novels and photographs tell stories in the same way: they create narratives that are a combination of the creator's intent, incidental features and the reader's (or viewer's) interpretation.

A story is not the either/or you suggest but is - rearranging your words correctly - "something you make up in your own head while [glimpsing] into someone else's".

Whether an object relies mostly on the viewer to construct a story biased towards their personal experience or whether there is a bias towards one particular narrative through the creator's intent is neither here nor there: we encounter an object - writing, a picture, and take away a story. It matters not if we all come away with different stories; in fact, it is inevitable. No two people can read a book or look at a picture and leave with the same story.

People may well only wield a camera to see what a thing looks like photographed. But the resultant picture will ALWAYS tell a story - subjective or objective, ambiguous or clear cut...
 
Rich,

I respect and agree with most of what you are saying. I understand that the artist/creator contributes something and that the viewer also contributes/brings something as well. And that this mix will vary with different media, works, audiences, etc. But the differences in this mix ARE differences, aren't they?

In a photograph or painting, no actual narrative can be provided by the artist or work. There is no temporal component in a still image.

Each medium is different, has different abilities & strengths. Not every medium can do everything all other media can.

You know, I think I would agree with you 100% if you substituted something like "Communicates" for "Tells a story". Everything we make communicates something to a viewer. It's just not always a narrative.

Cheers,
Gary
 
gns said:
In a photograph or painting, no actual narrative can be provided by the artist or work. There is no temporal component in a still image.

Each medium is different, has different abilities & strengths. Not every medium can do everything all other media can.

You know, I think I would agree with you 100% if you substituted something like "Communicates" for "Tells a story". Everything we make communicates something to a viewer. It's just not always a narrative.
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First, I agree with you that one medium may do certain things better than another: it's what the Modernists got hung up on - "medium specificity". That said, just because a medium's not great at something is not a reason to not use it for that purpose...

I think what we need to agree on is the meaning of "narrative".

First, why does a narrative have to imply the passage of time? I know Wikipedia is hardly the fount of all knowledge, but it does accord with the usual definition of a narrative: "A narrative (or story) is any account that presents connected events". Note that Wikipedia goes on to say that the passing of time is not part of the definition, merely an aesthetic convention.

A narrative is thus nothing more than the outcome of the perceived relationships between the components in a made object - such as a photograph - regardless of whether these relationships are intended or accidental.

"Communication" is way too non-specific and broad a concept - meaning simply the conveying of information.

Photographs tell stories - narrate - because we perceive a network of information, of cause and effect. Let's take one of my photos:

16-Rainburst.jpg


There's undeniably a story here - and in contrast to what you say, it involves time, albeit implied. What can we say about this picture? At it's most basic: "A woman crossing a road in a rain shower". We can add elements to the story, reading structure from the picture: "an unexpected shower" (she has no umbrella, and it's not raining in the distance), "in winter" (leafless trees), "in the afternoon" (a low sun), "on a hill in a town" (we're looking down on buildings, and villages don't have tower blocks). She's obviously a young woman, and a dog owner. There's plenty more information - for example, we can see that it's a fairly recent photo, certainly taken post-1960 - but that will suffice.

So, a simple and likely narrative from these interrelated elements is simply: "The girl was walking her two dogs one winter afternoon in town, when the heavens unexpectedly opened; head down, she scurried across the puddled road, and on uphill."

We can of course embellish this story: we suspect she was feeling miserable, and that she changed her sodden clothing in relief once home.

Writing is more suited to narrative, so would tell a similar story more completely that would be interpreted with less (but always with inevitable) variation by readers. But that does not change the fact that this picture tells a story, albeit leaving a lot implied and much to the imagination, so the stories associated with this photograph - as with most pictures - will splinter and multiply readily for different viewers.
 
zsas said:
People use photographs to tell stories about the information contained therein...
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Yes, the picture acts as a catalyst for the story to spring into the mind.
Clearly the picture does not tell the story, that's just figurative speech.
What may be happening in this thread is a problem of semantics, and those who take a literal stance against those who take a figurative interpretation of the original question: does a picture tell a story. So both groups are correct, though there are a few who are incorrect in thinking it takes more than one picture to tell a story, IMO.
 
Pictures tell a story for me. An interesting photograph may be a novel. Not so interesting maybe just a word.

The story could be just my imagination, then again the photograph may be of a scene which is so recognizable that the whole story and history before and after the event may come to mind when viewing the photograph.
 
M C H said:
I'm surprised there's so little agreement that a photograph can tell a story, and, for that matter, on what a story is.

A story is not a narrative; narration is a way of telling a story. A story is conflict, which needs neither a beginning nor an end.

Surely temporarility cannot preclude a photograph from telling a story, since temporarility can be shown in a photograph - as easily, or with as much difficulty, as showing motion. After all, a novel does not objectively contain the passing of time, though it can illustrate it. So too a photograph.

Consider the following, from Stanley Kubrick:


10365_66cm_ 008 by matthewcharrison, on Flickr

We have conflict, and even danger. We have temporarility implied in her direction, and motion in her precarious descent.

We see in this, as well, the limits of the subjectivism that some want to imbue in photographic story telling. Certainly the viewers bring their own perspectives, but the work of the photographer is neither perfectly opaque, nor transparent: the viewer is bounded in her perspective by what the photographer shows her.
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But as Winogrand so wonderfully articulated there is no narrative in a single photograph and that can be many different things to many different people. Its your own mind telling the story. Thats why newspapers have captions and articles and documentary photographers work in bodies of work.
 
Well then put emphasis on me dismissing it because I do and Kubricks photo only supports mine, his (Winogrand) and some others that share the same opinion that have chimed in this thread. There is no story there. I don't know why she is going down the stairs. I have no idea who she is or where she is going. I think it asks all those questions but doesn't tell me a story at all.
 
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