Reading the Narrative Photography

Narratives possess a profound ability to bypass mental defenses, alter perspectives, and evoke emotions. Their impact on individuals has been extensively studied, fueling ongoing fascination among theorists and critics. Narrative stands intricately linked with our identity and the way we perceive both ourselves and the world around us. At the same time, each new visual medium brings a range of new possibilities for developing narratives. Among the evolving concepts, narrative photography suggests that photographs hold the potential to tell a story. While some argue that the power of narrative is intrinsic to all photography, others contend that photography, with its inherent temporal limitations, remains a non-narrative medium. To navigate this discourse, it’s crucial to define the notion of a narrative.

Defining the Narrative

Storytelling and the act of listening to stories are inherent to human nature. From the oral tradition to myths, legends, fables, anecdotes, or ballads, humans have engaged in storytelling since the dawn of language. These tales, passed through generations, encapsulate valuable knowledge and wisdom. When discussing storytelling, the term “narrativ”  frequently surfaces. According to The Free Dictionary, a narrative is “a story or account of events, experiences, or the like.” This definition implies that the terms narrative and story are interchangeable, but is it really so? A story typically denotes a chronological sequence of events, with an event being a moment frozen in time. While every story has a narrative, not all narratives are stories. This inherent ambiguity encapsulates the elusive nature of the term.

American psychologist Jerome Bruner highlighted the integral relationship between narrative, time, and causality. As he pointed out, the narrative is irreducibly durative, emphasizing that there is no narrative without a timeline. Yet, thinking about a narrative, however, involves more than reflecting on how a series of events become connected. He contended that narratives construct the very events they connect.  This view aligns with Allen Feldman’s assertion that “the event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated,” meaning that a narrative constructs the very events it connects. Narratives are not found objects; they are constructed by participants and observers, actors and analysts. Viewing narrative as a construction unveils the clash of interpretations inherent within it. One of the narrative definitions is the one in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defining it as “the representation in art of an event or story, or an example of such a representation.” This means that a narrative can be about the story – it creates connections to story and storytelling but does not in and of itself have to be a story. It can be the way the story is told.

The Narrative Photography

Primarily non-verbal in nature, can photography tell a story or create a narrative? Unlike a story that unfolds over time, a photograph is a single moment frozen in time and detached from a timeline. Put this way, photography as a medium is almost completely incapable of creating a story. Yet, in her essay Pictorial Narrativity, Wendy Steiner states that while it’s unusual for a single image to tell a story, it has been common throughout the history of arts for an image to suggest or remind viewers of a larger narrative they’re already familiar with. This approach, termed staged photography, deliberately stages images with a narrative intent and recalls the narrative through association. Noted photographer Gregory Crewdson is known for employing this approach.

David Campbell, a professor and political scientist, asserted that “in telling visual stories about the world, photography is narrating the world.” Yet, the narrative in photography is often connected to the context. The narrative of Dorothea Lange‘s famous photo, Migrant Mother, becomes apparent only if the viewer is aware of the context in which it was taken. 

In the 18th century, Gotthold Lessing argued that while painting couldn’t narrate stories, it could imply drama by capturing the “pregnant moment.” This idea found resonance in photography as the “decisive moment” introduced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and his followers. Yet, iconic photographs like Cartier-Bresson’s Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare can often be more of an enigma than a story to be read. Especially in the domain of documentary photography, the viewer is often invited to invent a narrative of their own, using an image as a blank canvas for interpretation. Alfred Eisenstaedt’s celebrated photo of a sailor kissing a woman at Times Square post-World War II is one example of how the narrative constructed by the general public ended up differing greatly from reality.

Sequences and Photo Essays

In any sequence of images, the juxtaposition of visual signs gives rise to narrative potential. The 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge created many sequence photographs in order to study the motion that creates a literal and clear narrative. On the other hand, Duane Michals has created a range of photo series arranged in a sequence to convey ideas about love, emotion, philosophy, life, and death.

 The narrative qualities of photographic images have been explored since its early days through the medium of the book. While not necessarily unfolding over time, photo essays or photobooks convey an overall concept or idea through image selection, editing, and sequencing, hinting at a larger narrative. Temporality is elicited by the pace at which one turns the pages, by the order in which one reads, and by the relation between the images displayed. The final group of images and the way they are presented can clearly point at a story, a feeling, or an idea. The overall narrative would be the way this all comes together. The approach can vary and connections between images can range from being very specific to quite vague. Created over a period of 18 years, Darcy Padilla’s famous series, The July Project, documents the life and death of one woman. Through thousands of pictures, as well as letters, journal entries, logs of phone conversations and newspaper cuttings, it tracks the blighted life of Julie Baird, capturing in miniature the plight of America’s permanent poor. In addition to the curation of the images themselves, it is exactly these accompanying elements that provide context and further enhance the narrative. On the other hand, Robert Frank’s The Americans, a book that dissected the American image, takes a very different approach and creates a narrative that is more ambiguous and elusive.

Photographs as Clues

It might not be too much of a stretch to say that nearly all photographs allude to some form of story, however ambiguous it might be. While narratives are powerful, how we interpret them and how they make us feel changes dramatically with our point of view, our existing preconceptions, and our emotional state when we experience them. Rather than standalone entities, photographs act as pointers—directing attention towards a story, emotion, idea, or the creator’s expression. Photography can create a narrative, but the most powerful role of photography is its ability to complement narratives rather than express them and frame stories rather than tell them.