Can pictures tell stories? Visual storytelling with photography
Introduction
Stories are made, not found. They are uniquely human artefacts. All stories involve the deliberate selection of events, consciously organised into a particular structure and sequence, in order to show a process of change, which engages the audience’s empathy.
The same events, differently organised, can tell different stories. Equally, different events can be used to show the same story. For example, compare – as John Yorke does in his book Into the Woods – the film Jaws and the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. Superficially utterly unalike, yet both are about confronting and overcoming an existential and monstrous threat to a community.
Stories are more than an account of what happened, but they should not be an explanation of why things happened the way they did. Stories dramatise a process of change. A such, they must include action, reaction, and uncertainty of outcome. But too much explanation tends to make for a dull story.
Stories come in all shapes and sizes. Hemmingway famously told a story in just six words; whilst HBO sustained Game of Thrones over eight seasons and 73 episodes. There is a debate about whether the ‘plastic arts’ (photography, painting, sculpture, etc) can tell stories in the same way as the ‘temporal arts’ (novels, plays, films, dance, etc), but it seems at least possible.
Why is storytelling so popular?
Storytelling is probably as old as humanity itself. Certainly, as old as language and art. Today and throughout human history, stories have been ubiquitous across human cultures: from tales told round camp fires and paintings on cave walls; via church frescos and public libraries; to TV adverts and fashion magazines. Storytelling appears to be an indispensable part of human existence and an important way in which we make sense of the world around us.
Why do stories have such widespread and enduring appeal? Perhaps for three reasons. Their capacity to:
Engage – audiences empathise with the protagonist and so are immersed in the story;
Entertain – good stories makes sense whilst holding the audience in a state of suspense; and
Educate – the central idea of a story can be instructive, without being didactic.
Storytelling can also provide a compliment or counterpoint to more data-driven, fact-based communication. Rational argument and clear evidence is necessary to provide proof, but rarely or not universally is it sufficient to persuade. To change minds, you must touch hearts. Stories can do this very well.
After we finish watching a film or reading a book, friends may ask us, “What was it about?” Most people are likely to respond by recounting the plot, i.e. what happened. Some people will (also) say something about the cast or characters, i.e. who was in the story. Only a few people are likely to reply with an idea. But it’s an idea that is at the heart of every good story.
For example, the film Casablanca shows the events surrounding two people trying to escape Nazis-occupied Europe; interwoven with a complex love triangle; and various other subplots. The cast includes: Rick, nightclub owner; Captain Renault, French chief of police; Major Strasser, Gestapo officer; Victor Laszlo, Czech resistance leader; and his wife, Ilse Lund; amongst others. But what the film is really about is the process of change a man (Rick) goes through as he returns from a state of self-loathing to one where he can value himself once again and so begin to love others and rediscover a purpose to his life.
Can photographs tell stories?
Photographers - and photojournalists in particular - will be familiar with the idea of visual storytelling. Showing, not telling is commonly employed as a powerful storytelling technique in writing. Photography can only show, rarely (if ever) tell. Or, put another way, what cannot be seen cannot be photographed. Therefore, photography has real and unique potential, as a storytelling medium.
But this may not be so obvious to everyone. Stories evolve through time, but photographs are a ‘slice out of time’, so how can they tell stories? It’s true, single images have ‘story potential’ in a different way to a series or sequence of images. Nevertheless, photographs being a ‘slice out of time’ can be used to advantage in storytelling. The viewer is invited - encouraged even - to ask, “What happened before this?” and, ‘What will happen next?” Immediately, the viewer is drawn into the story making process, as a co-creator, without the need for the complexities of multimedia. Visual storytelling in engaging storytelling.
Photographs can also use composition to help introduce a storytelling component. Landscape photographers will be familiar with how this works, as they often use composition to draw the viewer’s eye into the scene and move it around the image. Unlike the instant of taking the photograph, the process of viewing the photograph unfolds over time, allowing a story to evolve. Each element of the composition comes to stand for a part of the story. These complicated and carefully constructed images are ones we tend to celebrate; but they can be hard to achieve and subject to as much chance as skill in their making.
If you want to tell more complex stories, with more intentionality and control, then you will need to go beyond single photographs and work with sequences of multiple images. These can be long format – a book or an exhibition – but they need only be made up of a few images. For example, Duane Michals made successful sequences from just three photographs.
How to tell visual stories
Many people’s idea of what makes a story is that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is a wholly inadequate description of what a story is or how it works. Your tax return has a beginning, a middle, and an end. As does the London Marathon, a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, a pencil, and this blog. But none of them are stories.
There isn’t a formula for telling stories that you can follow to achieve guaranteed success. Stories are too supple and subtle for that. But there are rules you can and should be aware of, before you (deliberately) choose to break them. None of these rules have anything to do with using particular focal lengths, depth of field, or types of shot (portrait, detail, etc). Rather, each image needs to perform a particular function, within an overall shape.
Almost every story will need and, therefore, cannot be reduce to less than the following elements:
An initiator – that starts the action;
A peak – which brings the action to a climax; and
A release – that shows the result(s) of the completed action.
Shooting and editing photo stories is not about selecting the most aesthetically or technically successful images. Nor is it about putting together images that have a visual and/or symbolical connection (this belongs to visual poetry). Rather it is about finding the best image to fulfil each of the necessary functions of a story, and then testing them to see if they work together as a coherent sequence, within the overall story shape.
To the above list you can choose but do not have to add:
Establishers – showing the setting (place and time) of the action;
Characterisation – introducing the protagonist and other characters;
Refiners – providing greater detail about the action, setting, or characters;
Hooks – drawing the viewer into the story; and
Prolongations – creating suspense by delaying the peak.
To prove the point that function is more important than form, consider the establishing shot. You might assume it needs to be a wide-angle image, but not so. Imagine a photograph that shows a close-cropped view of the Eiffel Tower, enough to be recognisable but not a view of the whole structure, and certainly not a view of the whole city. Nevertheless, the viewer immediately knows we’re in Paris; and imports what they already (think they) know about that city into the story world.
Finally, if you want to tell more complex, extended stories, then you are going to want to make use of the fractal, multi-layered capabilities of deep story structure. This allows sequences of images, e.g. Initiator-Peak-Release, to be grouped together and function as – say, an Initiator – as a whole.
In conclusion
Stories are a powerful way to enhance communication that photographers will want to naturally harness. Photographs are capable to telling stories and even possess some special qualities to do so. Telling stories using single images is somewhat different – and potentially harder – than telling stories using sequences of multiple images. Much of what is presented as the rules of visual storytelling misunderstands what stories are and how they work. Nevertheless, it is possible to understand and apply some relatively simple approaches, in order to tell powerful visual stories. But this isn’t a guaranteed formula for success – that’s the beauty of storytelling, in its endless variety and complexity.