On Visual Narratives — STREET SILHOUETTES

When I was a younger, I used to have a collection of Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. I collected it for over nine years. What had become of it, I am afraid my mother tossed it into the trash after the family home was sold. Unfortunately, I was too far away to rescue it from my mother’s swift indifference - which also sealed the fate of my record collection and my piles of illustration. Thinking back, I should have been more vigilant in saving the artifacts of my early life. Still, I guess I should be thankful that she didn’t throw out my old negatives.

In any event, I used to love going to the magazine shop to purchase my fashion magazines. It was such a treat for me to leave the suburbs behind as I headed into the city for my weekly splurge of magazines and records. Of course, I could have always made a subscription for my magazines. But, that would have robbed me of the opportunity to forage for other publications. In addition to the monthly staple of my trio, I sometimes purchase the French and Italian versions of them. Since they are so expensive, I really can’t get them on a regular basis.

What I loved most about those magazines were the photo spreads. To my eyes, there really was nothing more visually appealing than a professionally created photo series with high production value. They had it all. Super models, beautiful clothes, impeccable make up and hair styling, exotic locations, and the world’s best fashion photographers. Every aspect of those photos was perfect - from the lighting to the staging to the composition to the color balance to the subject direction and to the moment of image capture. It was always immaculate!

Keizer, Oregon - Leica M11 + Leica APO 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH-M

One breathtaking example from my youth was André Leon Talley’s 1996 Vanity Fair photo spread, “Scarlett ‘N The Hood” (photographed by Karl Lagerfeld), where Mr. Talley reimagined a reversal of racial roles during the antebellum period of the American South. Another notable example from my youth was Grace Coddington’s, 2003 Vogue photo spread, “Alice in Wonderland” (photographed by Annie Leibovitz), where Alice encounters the cast of characters she discovers inhabiting the dream world, all portrayed by various fashion designers.

Thinking back, there were so many photo spreads I loved - in fact too many to list them all in one post. Simply, they were all perfect. However, the love I had for these photo spreads was more than just an affection towards the effort and the resulting product. Beyond the glossy façade of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes in beautiful places, there were also the visual narratives created in these beautiful compositions. Oh, how I loved these visual narratives. It gave each photo an extra layer of complexity more than its physical documentation.

There was always a story to these photo spreads and individual photos. They were intentional and purposeful. The structure of the visual narrative was constructed like a sentence, with its own visual grammar, comprising of a subject and a visualized predicate, in which an action of expression, gesture, movement, interaction, and placement reveals something about the subject. It is through this revelation that a photo’s proverbial worth of a thousand words is achieved, thereby providing a photo the visual language to tell a story to its viewers.

All photos tell a story. Some better than others. In other words, the more effort a photographer puts in taking a photo, the more likely the photo will tell a better story. So in the case of Mr. Talley’s collaboration with Mr. Lagerfeld and Ms. Coddington’s collaboration with Ms. Leibovitz, their high budgeted and fully staffed effort resulted in exceptional story telling. In contrast to the photos taken for this dog and pony show… well… not so good. That said, what I share on this dog and pony show, being more premeditated, is still better than most.

Compared to the after-the-fact story telling characteristic of recreational street photographers depending on chance (or rather sheer luck) for less-than-ideal story opportunities to tell in documentation, I, by comparison, actually make the effort to schedule, plan, and coordinate with my partners-in-crime, who accepts my subject direction as a co-conspirator, in my visual story telling. That said, I cannot say that my story telling is any more profound than that of my much maligned recreational street photographer working solo and relying on luck.

Seriously, what is it that I’m trying to narrate with my photos? I mean, in what ways are any of my photos worth a thousand words? The story I tell of my partners-in-crime - on their own volition - is no more profound than a street snap of an unwitting passersby. In the case of the photos shared on this blog post, it tells the story of an outing to a local In-N-Out Burger joint. Like I said, not the most profound of stories. Even so, the photos I share are still grammatically correct in the language of visual story telling, unlike the errors found on street snaps.

Keizer, Oregon - Leica M11 + Leica APO 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH-M. Photobombing people removed from the background.

In other words, there are no spelling mistakes or misuse of verb tense in the facial expression or movement of my partner-in-crime. No eyes are captured in mid blink, no mouth are captured slurring in mid speech, and no appendages are captured out of place. By comparison, opportunistic street snaps are filled with all the telltale signs of poor timing, wherein eyes are captured in mid blink, mouths are captured slurring in mid speech, and appendages captured out of place. Mistakes in compositional grammar really ruins a photo’s visual narrative.

I know my judgment of poorly taken street snaps seems rather heavy handed. To be fair, it is nearly impossible to take a perfect street snap unblemished by any compositional error in visual grammar. How could any street snap be captured perfectly if the unwitting subject isn’t in on the undertaking? Again, eyes will be in mid blink, mouths will be slurred, and appendages will be all over the place. To use the analogy of visual grammar, most opportunistic street snaps look like the photo equivalent of broken English (or Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, etc).

That said, not all street snaps look like broken English. The great masters in their street photography did seem to understand the visual grammar of taking a proper photo. Of course, there really wasn’t too much of a secret why their photos didn’t look like broken English. Simply, they interacted with strangers and passersby and was able to get them to cooperate. And with the pesky business of constructing a proper photo out of the way, the final product would not be compromised by errors in compositional grammar blemishing the visual narrative.

Keizer, Oregon - Leica M11 + Leica APO 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH-M. Photobombing cars removed from the background.

This is why we seldom take the street snaps of a recreational street photographers seriously. Their photos are riddled with the photo equivalent of broken English. As a result, whatever visual narrative they might be telling will invariably be distracted by errors in compositional grammar captured out of haste in seizing that fleeting moment. For that reason, the broken English of a street snap taken in haste has the very sad appearance of an incomplete photo. It takes away from the effectiveness of the visual narrative, regardless of its subject matter.

As for the subject matter of a visual narrative, it really doesn’t matter what it is. It can be anything from the lofty (like documenting a war zone) to the humble (like this outing to an In-N-Out Burger joint). That said, what does matter is how that visual narrative is structured. T’s have to be crossed and I’s have to be dotted in the photos. And the only way to do that is by cooperating with one’s subject - whether premeditatedly with a participating subject or spontaneously with a stranger on the street. Only then would the visual narrative appear complete.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of obliging partners-in-crime (let alone the high budgeted and fully staffed productions typical of Vogue and Vanity Fair). It does seem awfully unfair to say that street snaps taken in haste make substandard visual narratives. Still, what is worth noting is that the effort undertaken in shooting a conventional street snap is absent of any collaboration between the photographer and the subject. As such, is it any surprise that the visual narrative of street snaps look nothing like what you see in Vogue or Vanity Fair?

In the final analysis, the overall effectiveness of a visual narrative is a factor of effort spent in constructing and composing the photo, regardless of the subject matter. The more one puts into the undertaking, the more the the visual narrative will benefit. That is why the visual narratives in the photo spreads of Vogue and Vanity Fair, along with Elle and Bazaar are better than your typical recreational street snap. That said, the secret to a good visual narrative isn’t the budget. It’s the willingness to ask a potential subject to cooperate. We can all do that.

Last, if you’re wondering why I didn’t write about how to construct an effective visual narrative, it would be like writing about how to construct an effective sentence. When phrased in that way, one will understand how silly a question that is.

Special thanks to Grace for joining me on this photowalk.

Disclaimer

Sep 17 On Visual Narratives

Disclaimer

Sep 17 On Visual Narratives

Oct 15 Too Many Photos

Sep 3 Hump Day Sunday