A Brief Story About Stories

Abstract

In this chapter several conceptual elements are exposed that help to understand what photographic narration is. This narrative style works with the inherent communicative power of images alone, above all when they are combined effectively. Images can be classified according to type, and we can use this classification as a guide to make good use of this power. However, before listing the types, I would like to propose a game that can serve as a tool to encourage better storytelling through photographs, using the concept of the technical script in a comprehensible manner in teachers’ in-service education and in subsequent application to teaching, research or any area of knowledge and communication.

Introduction

Ever since the dawn of humanity, our existence has been sustained by the air we breathe, the food we eat and the stories we tell ourselves. The transmission of information has been fundamental for the evolution of our species, an evolution that has also transformed the use we make of our capacity for narrative. This capacity is evidenced from the cave art that can be found throughout the world, through all kinds of tribal songs, myths and legends, folk tales and rituals dedicated to a multitude of deities, to the current concept of creative communication via literature, painting, sculpture, music, radio and film. In the end, everything we create tells our story. Through an infinite variety of narrative customs and forms, we proclaim who we are, where we come from and, to a large extent, where we are going.

As social beings, we do not just narrate. In most cases, when we need and manage to communicate, we do so with the expectation of receiving a response. For better or worse, it is this ability to connect with each other that has brought us here. “I will tell men my life so that they will tell me who I am”, wrote León Felipe in his poem Who Am I? Narrative is similar, a reciprocal exchange between individuals who need each other in order to be human, to know who they are and to continue to have something to say.

Narrative, then, could be defined as our ability to tell our version of something, to explain what it is like or how it happened. There are infinite forms of expression, just as there are countless things to tell. Hence the success of platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, applications that enable us to tell all the world what we want, in the simplest way possible, with the aim of receiving direct and immediate interaction. We do this by means of texts, voice messages and, above all, videos and photographs, which in most cases we create using ever more affordable and accessible mobile devices. The sheer quantity of images that we take every day sometimes poses an obstacle between us and the true power of photographic narrative. From the instant we take a photograph until the moment we analyse what it tells us, we need to set it apart from the rest and endow it with a special meaning.

Beautiful photographs, such as those we see in fashion magazines, are not challenging. Instead, they tend to reinforce stereotypes and tell us things we already know. This approach to photography is harmless, but it does not represent who or what we really are.¹ We must nurture humanity’s innate tendency to sift through reality and turn it into a story to be told, putting this capacity to good use so that it does not become diluted in the bewilderment of a host of images that we are unable to store safely or decipher in a meaningful or coherent manner. Having said that, the use of narrative in education and, more specifically, as a tool for teachers’ in-service training, seems to me to be essential, primarily because of our natural fascination with photography as a tool for discovery, for storytelling, for growth and development, but also because of its potential for application in all kinds of educational, learning and research contexts. Narrative provides us with the means to know ourselves and to know others in an accessible, affordable and up-to-date way that also allows us to explore, know and connect with the world based on the questions and answers that the world asks us.

Photographer Toni Frissell, sitting, holding a camera on her lap, with several children standing around her, somewhere in Europe in 1945 (public domain).

The Photographic Narrative

Photographs have been used as a tool for communication, especially in the press and advertising, since the nineteenth century, but documentary photography did not come into its own until the 1930s and the advent of new, easy to use cameras that provided sharp, quality images for newspapers and magazines. Photography’s success was due to its capacity to connect with the disillusioned public of the inter-war period. For readers, photographic narrative became the most reliable and credible way of reading the news. The more and better the images printed on paper, the more convincing and exciting the stories appeared. This credibility is no longer the main reason for today’s massive exchange of photographs and videos, which are now easily manipulated, but nevertheless images have retained the capacity to depict and to a large extent explain reality.

The attraction exerted by photographs is based on the classic narrative formula, the essence of the art of storytelling. From classical Greece to the present day, anyone who has tried to make effective use of narrative knows that engaging the audience’s attention is essential. This is why the film industry pays millions of dollars for some scripts but discards most of them: some stories use narrative tension successfully, but others do not. The three-act structure can be simply summarised as introduction, plot and denouement. Some say it is carved into our DNA.² Throughout what follows, I shall discuss how to tell stories better through photography.

Photography as a Response

Humanity’s delight in stories stems from our ability to question things and our need to obtain an answer to each of these questions. The classic three-act narrative structure gratifies our inherent compulsion to decipher the world, endowing it with a clear and creative order by providing answers. This is why most stories start by introducing the characters and contextualising the plot, which is simply answering the questions of where the story happens and who forms part of what is being told. Then, as the plot unfolds, all sorts of questions might arise, which may be answered, or not, in various ways until reaching the denouement. The closer stories adhere to this basic structure, the better they work.³

Photographic narrative can be used to ask and answer questions, and images can be used to tell our version of something. Since the golden age of photojournalism (1930–1950), photographic narrative has been used as a dialogue between various photographs, transforming an unspecified number of images into a photo essay. There is no other goal, because photographic narrative speaks of the capacity to tell a story through several photographs. What is really important is to determine how these relate to each other in our story and what role we give to each of them.

Therefore, we must know what types of image we can create in order to answer the questions we want to ask, via different stories told through photographs. We can experiment with ordering them in different ways, explore the world globally or concentrate on details, portray the people around us showing, according to our vision, who they are, and portray ourselves so that we know, according to their vision, who we are. We can use photographs to reflect, make decisions, talk about tolerance, inclusion and equality, concentrate and evade. Images can be used to describe tasks, explain the history of spaces and, in short, creatively decipher the world.

Narrative Structures

Since time immemorial, humanity has studied the best way to tell a story. From Aristotle to any present-day YouTuber, all of us who at some point have had something to tell and have tried to tell it have encountered the enormous quantity of options that exist to explain, narrate or convince our audience.

Later on, I shall write about visual variety and the need we have as documentary photographers to answer diverse questions through different types of image, because not all images answer these questions in the same way. We can choose between a portrait or a detail, we can select a general shot to explain where we are before showing a decisive moment, or we can simply choose not to do so. To compose our stories, we photographers show our intentions, make decisions and make good our shortcomings, because in most cases, when we start to structure a report, we become aware that we must put together a puzzle without having all the pieces.

Hence, it is crucial to understand reportage as a global concept rather than a random collection of photographs. The simplest thing would be to compose our visual stories using the classic narrative structure. To facilitate understanding, the three-act structure can be summarised as an introduction, development to the decisive moment and closure. Documentary photographers use this magic formula that we all understand to better explain their vision, and this is perhaps the most feasible way of working on a photo essay.

Examining our own work and that of our colleagues helps us to identify what we are doing well and also to pinpoint our weaknesses. Perhaps the best way to put our reports in context is to realise that we did not take a general shot to explain where our essay takes place, right after we printed our photographs and showed them to others. This would help us understand that we will take better portraits if we get close enough; that we have to provide ample detail to obtain unique stories, especially if we do so by examining our own work when deciding whether we are good portraitists or if in the end we have captured the detail we originally aspired to do. We must learn from our mistakes in order to implement this training process in the narration of teachers’ diaries and life stories, for our personal and professional development and as a communication tool applied to education, research and knowledge.

Narrative in the Photo Gallery

When a project is completed, the next logical step is give it physical form so that it can be shown to and shared with the rest of the world.⁴ Interesting work, which always provokes a multitude of debates and reflections, spurs us to print our images and examine them from different points of view, moving away from formal work based on the classic narrative structure. Once we have printed several images from our respective photo galleries, we could share them with others to try together to structure them and seek different ways to reach different narratives. The various possible options include ordering them chronologically or by type, theme, colour or location, furthering our intention to recount something understandable, or not. It is possible to analyse the power of photographic narrative to tell several stories from the same photographs. Images by various photographers may be combined to seek a coherent discourse or a random structure may be used to understand that, beyond their different uses or combinations, photographs always end up narrating something.

In the photographic tradition, the portfolio is viewed as a collection of images that identify its creator, from different points of view, through the deliberate selection and organisation of his or her work to communicate an artistic discourse. Nowadays, due to the vast number of photographs we take, our mobile devices, social media sites and multiple applications related to photography organise our images using folder structures that we can order according to different parameters, such as the date they were taken, the place where they were taken or the people who appear in them. Thus, the analysis and study of a photo gallery can be considered a contemporary concept in photographic discourse, through the selection and reorganisation of our files with the deliberate intention of telling a story better, or by printing some of the photographs to give our photographic discourse physical form in a medium that is easier to touch, share and rearrange.

Photo galleries are a reflection of the photographer who takes them whether we view them on a computer screen in their original state or in a gallery following a complex workflow. Similarly, when a reporter takes photographs at an event, without doing anything to his or her portfolios the very order of events marks an identity, a vision, a battery of decisions that tell something through the photographs that were taken and those that were not. However, there is no doubt that when we examine our photographs, when we order them and seek coherence, when we work on our own narrative and visual harmony, this is when we are our best as photographers and tell our best stories.

We can work on the dimensions of our images, zooming in or out from whatever we considered interesting when taking the photographs. We can take pictures as if we were explorers, capturing small details and highlighting them for our audience. We can introduce ourselves into our stories while taking our photographs and gaining the trust of our subjects, interacting with them, without forgetting that we must analyse them with perspective and observe them from outside, through our general shots, in order to understand where we are and who they are, just before showing them in powerful and startling images, or offering a conclusion faithful to our message with images that invite reflection and convey our idea of the world to our audience.

This method, this intention that the photographer pursues to deploy the power of photographic narrative consistently, marks the difference between a predictable and harmless portfolio and a gallery brimming with possibilities. It is crucial to plan before taking photographs in order to obtain a collection of images that enable you to relate your vision of something and to do so as a professional would.

Narrative in the Photo-Book

Recent years have witnessed growing interest in photo-books as a form of artistic or documentary expression for both amateur and professional photographers alike. Fairs and congresses abound where all kinds of publishers exhibit their new works in paper format, and growing numbers of authors are turning to desktop publishing thanks to affordable print-on-demand prices and the increasing sophistication and affordability of digital printers. However, the photo-book is a complex medium. Its visual unit is the double spread, and the sequence of double spreads is what endows the story in images with its narrative and dynamic flow. From a photographic point of view, knowing that the final product will be made up of a series of images brings with it new demands but also probably relieves the pressure of having to capture a single photograph that summarises an entire event.⁵

Although this chapter is not the place to delve into the exciting world of graphic publishing and editorial design, I nevertheless believe it is helpful to analyse the different options for combining photographs in a double spread or for unfolding our stories over the course of a book. Such information may serve as a starting point for editing a publication containing the photographic narrative projects that the present book is intended to encourage. First, we must subtly transform our vision as photographers into that of graphic editors of our own work, in order to analyse our photographs simply on the basis of the use we wish to make of them in our publishing project, rather than as works in themselves.

For a graphic editor, there are four options for using images in a double spread in a book. The first is to use a single image, however we like, for the double spread, to give it pride of place and dwell on its meaning. Alternatively, we can consider juxtaposition or pairing, which is the art of combining two images to establish a tension between them, in most cases seeking a simple and logical relationship: two people looking at each other, or near-far, before-after or portrait-detail contrasts. We can also seek contrast through dimension, deciding whether to make the photographs larger or smaller in our design, or by studying how they are related in the narrative, based on colour, composition or their emotional, aesthetic and artistic qualities.

Sequencing is used to create movement and rhythm by placing different images that recount the performance of a task, usually taking great care to achieve coherence in the composition and the point of view and thus convey an appropriate sensation of intensity and rhythm, as Eadweard Muybridge did with the subjects of his studies that we shall examine later. The mosaic, the last possible combination of our images in a double spread, presents a collection of small photographs arranged in a block. In this case, the effect of the whole is more important than that of the individual images.⁶

It is important to remember that the aim of the graphic editor is to create a connection between the reader and the work through the turning of pages and the relationship between the different double spreads. It is essential to create a rhythm and tension between our images throughout the book if the publishing project is to be consistent, and we must accept the idea that our publications must be entertaining while at the same time being offered in a logical and coherent way to our audience.

A good way to create this tension is to structure our images in the planning stage, providing a balanced visual variety until the photographic narrative achieves the desired coherence and abounds with patterns that render it easy to read and understand. For example, we might impose an order on the presentation of our stories through our different double spreads, first presenting a general shot and then juxtaposing a portrait and a detail that, through their pairing, speak to us about who the subject is and how he or she feels. On the next page, we might include a sequence in which the subject performs a task that defines him or her, and conclude with a mosaic in which we make a more or less extensive selection of the theme, perhaps supported by a text in which we explain who the author of the photographs is and what process was used to create the story, until we obtain a coherent vision of something concrete. If we follow this same method, or any other, throughout the book, we will have created a template, which is the best tool that graphic editors have to achieve coherence in their publications.

Visual Variety

Photographs are something of a talisman, a treasure. The ease with which we can create images today using all kinds of devices has diluted the previously exceptional nature of the process of using a camera to explain the world by capturing a moment in time and preserving it forever in an archive. This moment may be a memory, a place, a person or a feeling. Everything can be used by photographic language to order the complexity of all that passes through our minds every day. The photographer Richard Misrach once said that “beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas” because it “engages people when they might otherwise look away”.⁷ Thus, we talk about photography, and we talk with photographs. Let’s see how.

The editors of magazines such as Picture Post, Paris Match, Sports Illustrated and LIFE achieved unprecedented commercial success in photojournalism through their photo essays, which they used to improve their reporting on a wide range of subjects. For each new commission, they sent their photographers what has become known as a technical script, which the photographers used as a guide on what photographs to take to support the stories the journalists wished to write. They discovered that the dialogue between photographs was more powerful and constructive the greater the balance between certain types of image. This formula for creating good photographic stories through visual variety has prevailed to this day and continues to be the best way to use photographic narrative.

The Technical Script

Photographic narrative works with the inherent communicative power of images alone, above all when they are combined effectively. Images can be classified according to type, and we can use this classification as a guide to make good use of this power. However, before listing the types, I would like to propose a game that can serve as a tool to encourage better storytelling through photographs, using the concept of the technical script in a comprehensible manner in teachers’ in-service education and in subsequent application to teaching, research or any area of knowledge and communication.

Real stories are a good starting point for encouraging people to talk about their photographs. Choosing a subject and explaining it in words is the easiest way to begin composing photo essays, because no work really speaks for itself. Humans want to know where things come from, how they were made and by whom. The stories you tell about your work have an enormous influence on how people respond, how they feel about it and what they understand about it, and what people feel and understand about your work affects their appreciation of it.⁸

In my workshops for professional photographers, I encourage my students to tell me their photo essays as if they were a story. I ask them to tell me these stories in words. They can tell me any story they have ever told, or intend to tell through their photographs in the future. Once they have verbally answered the most relevant questions about their photo story, I invite them to substitute each sentence with an image and so on until reaching the end of the essay. In this way, the technical script is written organically, learning from the processes established by the documentary photographer when selecting the photographs that best tell his or her photographic stories. The technical script, therefore, is a kind of wish list specifying the images that the photographer believes his or her story needs. Some are very general and others are very specific, and it is best to use the script as a working document that can be modified during the process.⁹

The use of photographic narrative in training scenarios and of this simple game around the concept of technical script elicits many suitable topics. We may start the proposed essays on our own, introspectively, or in conjunction with a colleague. However, explaining who we are may perhaps be a more complex task than explaining who the people around us are, where they live, how they relate and what their routines or spaces are, using words to describe their reality, their life and their world, selecting a series of photographs that speak of that reality, translating that life into visual images and explaining that world with photographs.

The objective is none other than to continuously answer all the questions we may ask ourselves through a balanced combination of the kinds of images that I shall list below, which we may work on separately or in relation to each other, using this method as a process in continuous evolution, as a resource, as a game, to nurture our creativity and in no case to limit it.

The General Shot

General shots can be used to open our reports, as an introduction to our essay and as an answer to where our story takes place. In this case, the sense of place and the narrative go hand in hand. We are talking about a definition of the medium as a formula for research and reflection on time, history and space. The fleeting nature inherent in the evolution of spaces connects with the idea of human intervention in the world and our relationship with everything around us.

Ansel Adams. The Tetons—Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, in 1942 (public domain).

General landscape shots require an active commitment on the part of the viewer,¹⁰ who can analyse the image in general and then investigate connections between the different elements in the photograph, go into detail and highlight them as outstanding features.

In photographs of spaces, however, the relationship between humans and the space portrayed acquires greater importance, because the latter’s architectural motifs, textures and capacity to evolve all speak of those who built and inhabited it,¹¹ of how the different elements in the image determine personality and meaning, analysing types of behaviour or activities and delving into concepts such as volume and form, presence and absence, or memory and the passage of time.

Walker Evans. General store interior. Moundville, Alabama. Summer 1936 (public domain).

We could focus on the relationship we all have with places, on our capacity to intervene in them and turn them into something different, and on how these in turn have the power to suggest different emotions through context and use. We could start with our own professional spaces, in each of their corners, and then go outside and study what can be seen through a classroom window or on our way home, or we could start by analysing the places we walk through every day without paying too much attention to detail.

For years, I have been studying the evolution of spaces over time, taking the same picture in the same places at different times of the day and on different days. General shots have this capacity for suggestion. Landscapes or photographs of different spaces based on the multitude of elements of which they are composed always bring surprises thanks to the capacity of photographic narrative to connect us with the world and to evolve with it.

Close-Ups and Interaction

With close-ups and interaction, we reveal what is going on by focusing on a group or an activity and using our lens to seek people interacting. This process is nurtured by our research capacity and our ability to capture the relationship between various people, with the same intention as the documentary photographer. We could investigate social, cultural or political trends, or focus on their aesthetic or ethnographic nature by taking a spontaneous photograph of a purely chance moment.

Dorothea Lange. Migrant agricultural worker’s family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California. February or March 1936 (public domain).

For years, Dorothea Lange answered questions about “Migrant Mother”, her most popular photograph, and about the close-up process that led her to portray a starving woman accompanied by two of her children with breathtaking naturalness. She always answered with patience and honesty about what her job as a reporter entailed, saying that often, it was sufficient just to stay in one place, instead of walking in and out in a cloud of dust; it was enough to sit on the floor with people and let their children touch her camera with their grubby little hands and put their fingers on the lens. She allowed them to do this because she knew that if she behaved with generosity, the world was likely to be generous in return.¹²

Close-up photography, then, makes more sense when a balance is found between the photographer’s invisibility and his or her approach to the subject matter, which can be gradual and treated as a method for finding a connection with the people photographed. The goal is to portray them using the power of naturalness, without altering their nature or psychology, amplifying their documentary value and the spirit of the image as a representation of reality. This echoes the analysis presented in Chap. 6 on the importance of the participant in rituals who takes the photograph or photographs, the content of which is subject to assessment. Thus, close-ups also allow us to position ourselves within our stories, to analyse our role as photographers and to gain the trust of the people around us before trying to photograph them naturally, or hoping that they will allow us to take a portrait that really defines them, just as the migrant mother and her starving children did in Nipomo, California, in February 1936, when Dorothea Lange took her famous portrait of them.

Dorothea Lange—Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children (migrant mother). Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California, February 1936 (public domain).

The photographic narrative speaks of a photograph’s capacity to connect with its viewer, and it can be interesting to analyse how a spontaneous image of different people interacting draws us into a private, almost intimate space, or how an unimportant moment can become a document that invites us to reflect and debate. We might even explore how can we turn that spontaneous moment into a sequence over time, accompanying the people who interacted in the hope that that first image could become the beginning of the subsequent performance of a task, keeping ever-present our documentary intention and the narrative value we can transmit to our photographs by presenting the ordinary in an extraordinary way.¹³

Sequences or Micro-Stories

Sequences or micro-stories explain the performance of a task through several photographs, and are used in photojournalism reports to provide movement and rhythm. This continuity relates a sequence of images, allowing the photographic narrative to recount how something happened from start to finish, or with a documentary intent to provide all the necessary information for the viewer to perceive our stories and draw his or her own conclusions, because an image contains an internal story based on its interaction with others. Just as a historian, the photographer takes these fragmentary testimonies and works with them to build a story or argument.¹⁴

We could begin our analysis of temporality with simple tasks, reducing the photographic narrative to very easy to understand communicative games. We could use a photograph taken earlier which connects with another that we have yet to take, or we could create stories based on the juxtaposition of two images, for example, an image of a teacher listening and another of students talking. As in cinema, the combination of shot and countershot is used to give rhythm and depth to such basic activities as a simple conversation.

From this analysis of the performance of small tasks, we can redirect our sequences to the investigation of more complex essays. However, it might be advisable to start by telling small micro-stories through two, three, four or five images, building up gradually, so that in the very process of narrating we can analyse the concept of quantity, ellipsis and movement. Since its inception, photography has investigated how objects move from an aesthetic and organic point of view, as in the studies by Eadweard Muybridge, one of the great precursors of cinematography.¹⁵ Taking different pictures of a horse while it gallops, for example, can lead us to a surprisingly large number of narrative works related to the illusion of movement, ordering and disordering the images to reveal how the sequences can be altered by modifying the way we visualise them, and how this intervention can in turn alter the way the animal moves.

Eadweard Muybridge. Animal locomotion—16 frames of racehorse “Annie G.” galloping Philadelphia, 1887 (public domain).

We could also write a short script with different events, similar to a scene, to begin to explore our ability to create sequences that speak of our lives. Even the evolution of spaces and their relationship with the passage of time could be revisited based on sequences that speak of how these places change according to time, light or context.

Decisive Moment

Images of a decisive moment tell a story in themselves, recounting a fleeting moment and an emotion that brings the essence of our story together in a single photograph. Here, the choice of moment is everything and relies on the photographer’s ability to capture it just before it sinks beneath the flow of events, to rescue it from oblivion and the passage of time.¹⁶ An example would be Robert Capa’s famous photograph taken during the Spanish Civil War at the precise moment when Federico Borrel fell to the ground after being hit by the bullet that killed him.

Robert Capa. The falling soldier. 5 September 1936 (public domain).

Professional photographers have always shown great interest in images of this type because they create such a strong impression on the audience, who view them as if they were treasures, like jewels that illuminate us with their brightness and open the door to a world full of mystery and information. They form part of the visual diary of our lives, because historically they have been chosen above all others for the front pages of newspapers, for gallery exhibitions or to hang in our homes. It should be added that such exceptional photographs of a decisive moment are nearly always the result of chance. Recall that the precise moment when Robert Capa took “The falling soldier” was a decisive moment that brought us closer to the devastating experience of men and war, but the small events that happen every day in the street, in school corridors or in the intimacy of any educational event can be equally decisive.

A photograph of my son blowing out the candles on his first birthday cake is therefore a decisive moment. However, it could be argued that photography’s unique capacity to portray great moments in history is being devalued by technology in our information society. Mobile devices enable us to blithely take vast numbers of photographs at all times in any circumstances, to accumulate them without selection and to share them massively and immediately without any consciousness of the use of the image as a memory or an object in itself, based on the decisive choice of some images over others, of their printing on paper, of their protection as an element that belongs to us and that speaks to us about who we are, accompanying us over the years to give an account of the passing of time and thus preserve our memory.

Thousands of photographs and videos are taken every day without awareness of the photographic act or of the concept of the lived moment. This massive audiovisual consumption is changing our capacity to connect with an image and for that image to tell us things. Consequently, it might be interesting to address the concept of the decisive moment before trying to immortalise such moments in a photograph. We could try highlighting some events over others, analysing this concept from a playful point of view, taking real or imaginary photographs at the precise moment when something happens, photographing patiently, perhaps waiting for days for a singular or exceptional moment that can be preserved thanks to photography, or perhaps avoiding taking that precise photograph so as not to distance ourselves from the moment and be able to rescue it from oblivion simply by having formed part of it. It might be interesting to debate photographs of singular moments we have experienced in the classroom that we did not manage to take, prioritising the transcendent, fleeting moment over the representation that we could have created with a camera.

Detail and Close-Ups

Detail and close-ups help us to highlight elements that provide unique information that more closely reflects what we want to tell. Humanity’s attraction to detail is echoed throughout the history of art in the artistic reproduction of a multitude of objects and still lifes. With the birth of photography, this urge to define ourselves by depicting the material objects surrounding us continued. By detailing the material world, we reveal the greatness of the smallest things.

The documentary photographer uses this attraction to define the global through the concrete by conducting an exercise in exploration that might begin in our workplace, attempting to create everyday descriptions of the space as a general vessel containing a multitude of small things. First we look, next we explore and then, through our photographs, we direct the viewer’s attention to something that would otherwise be ignored, transforming an ordinary artefact into a metaphor or a symbol of something more important.¹⁷

We can also become aware of photography as a thing in and of itself. We can print different images and then photograph them, or play at retrieving photographs from our family albums to discuss and reflect on the romantic and emotional nature of photography as a valuable act that preserves our past unchanged.

Exploring our belongings as traits of our personalities can also become an exciting task. In examining our belongings as objects that define us, the photographic narrative raises their status from unnoticed elements to things that contain emotional and psychological meaning, endowing the object photographed with the qualities of the person who possesses it.¹⁸

The logical evolution of the previous activity is to portray different people through their belongings in order to connect the viewer and subject through an object that defines the latter, just as we define John Lennon through his glasses or Charlie Chaplin through his cane and bowler hat.

Portrait and Personalisation

Throughout history, the human face has proved the best window on the subject’s identity and the essence of his or her being. Through portraits and personalisation, we obtain spontaneous or posed images of who our subjects are, images that also depict what they look like and how they feel.

The photographer Philippe Halsman became famous for his portraits of political, cultural and entertainment personalities in the act of jumping. He believed that a good photographer was like a psychologist who knew how to extract the truth from a patient. We could begin our dynamics with this same intention, gradually getting closer to spontaneous, natural, more intimate portraits. In order to reveal something about the subject, it is sometimes necessary to maintain control while gaining his or her trust. If we invite subjects to do something fun like jump, doodle or hold their breath, we take their mind off the photographic act, helping to develop a relationship.¹⁹

The standard portrait, which focuses on the face and physiognomy, tends to highlight some features over others, emphasising the features that establish greater psychological or emotional connection between the viewer and the subject portrayed. The correct use of light is crucial if we want our portraits to reflect what we wish to say about the people we photograph: to isolate them from the world, to portray them in their context or to embellish or dramatise our image. Light is never neutral and always has psychological implications.²⁰

The approach that leads to the most telling image of the person portrayed entails observation of their most characteristic details. There are various ways to achieve this. We could take our photograph in front of a window or at a distance from direct light, using the flash or not to control the intensity of our message; we could place our subject in front of a neutral background to detach the person from his or her space, or we could place the subject in a particular place so that his or her world, face and body define it. However, we must never forget that, beyond a study of lines and forms, the portrait forms part of our intention to tell who we are from an emotional, cultural, ethnographic, historical, political or socio-economic point of view. Good portraitists reveal the people around them, exploring and defining them until obtaining a photograph that represents their vision and opinion of their subjects. They are not concerned with taking flattering photographs but with showing the world, and even the subjects themselves, who they really are.

Closing Photographs

Closing photographs are images that serve to conclude our story. They represent a final reflection, a coda, that either supports our message or suggests a contradiction. Within a documentary report, and even more so when published, the closing photograph is usually the last message we transmit to the viewer. Photographers must underscore their narrative intention just before their readers draw their final conclusions.

Throughout “Country Doctor”, his famous report for LIFE, W. Eugene Smith presents a rural doctor in relation to his environment and his patients. The report begins with a dark and threatening photograph in which Dr. Ernest Ceriani is walking in a rural setting with black clouds in the background. The photo essay locates him in the midst of frenetic activity in order to depict his demanding, exhausting work. Smith achieves this through numerous images in which Ceriani can be seen in a multitude of spaces attending to all kinds of emergencies and responsibilities. As a hopeful conclusion, the final double spread shows several luminous photographs of the village where Ceriani works, and he too is depicted, exhausted and pensive, with a cup of coffee in his hands, in a place that could well be an operating theatre. Thus, in closing his report on a family doctor, W. Eugene Smith turns the doctor into a modern surgeon. Moreover, his notes for the opening photograph showing the doctor crossing a field contain the instruction to use the darkest ones at the beginning and gradually include the lightest ones later,²¹ underlining his clear intention to explain Ceriani’s stressful life through the importance of people like him for the development and progress of the most disadvantaged areas.

Thus, closing photographs represent our final chance to show our vision of the world, our discourse on how we understand the things we see and how we believe they should be conveyed to the viewer. It is not so much a surgical quest for truth, but rather a commitment to endow our own way of thinking with authenticity. We can take certain liberties when formulating our stories, since documentary photography is not a precise record of reality, but rather an interpretation of what happens, on which we stamp our own vision and connect with others through agreement or discrepancy. For the professional photographer, this is what the photographic narrative is all about: a path that invites us to make our voices heard. Photographers are always on the lookout for a new photograph that will say something about us. If we go through life wanting to find something to say, sooner or later, we will find it.

The aim is none other than to continually answer all the questions that we may ask ourselves, through a balanced combination of the types of image I have just analysed. We could work on these photographs separately or by relating them to each other, employing the dynamics presented or many others that may arise and that we should attempt if we are to view photography as a journey of experimentation within teachers’ in-service training, constantly working on the development of our photo galleries, or printing our photographs so that we can handle them, or creating a photo-book that we can show as a reminder of our efforts and our voices as creators, as educators, as people. The photographic narrative must be viewed as part of a process in constant evolution, as a living resource, as an interactive dynamic, to which we turn to nurture —but never to limit— our creativity, to take photographs without fear of making mistakes, without limits, to connect with the world in the conviction that the more things teachers can tell through photography, the better they will become as teachers.