Monday, October 6, 2014

narrative photography (in search of a narrative)


My class has got very good at reading narrative photographs, and unpacking the stories within them, and even at taking narrative photographs of their own, posing people ambiguously half in and half out of doorways (or toilet stalls), giving surreptitious glances, and raising questions about how far one needs humans at all (a strange disembodied bicycle seat had us all wondering).  But this image wasn't posed, today, just grabbed in a moment of serendipity (I was actually taking a picture of Eadward Muybridge with a pair of men's underpants on his head - it was obviously an underwear themed day around the cinema school ...).  It looks like Italy, but it's not; the back wall seems almost as unconvincing as an opera flat.  But the washing?  The young man reading - reading what?  Directions?  Script lines?  And then, in the background - and I didn't see this till I downloaded it, but perfectly positioned - a man in a wheelchair, with a service dog.

So please - feel free to speculate ...


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