After the webinar, I have a clear sense that I need to develop my narrative and sequencing skills in order to better translate my project into a coherent series. If my aim is to present the work without the information initially, then it is important to get a clear sequence of the images to tell the story I am trying to communicate. The amount of images is crucial, too. I have so far put together 20 images in my gallery, however others have many more. I need to consider how many images will make an effective narrative and how many would ultimately start to reduce the impact of the work.

The feedback, although positive, narrative was a key area to look at. People liked the display of the work and the minimal gallery and page. I am happy with this, although there are some areas I would like to develop given the time to do so. For example, the native WordPress slider has a grey background that I am unable to change without looking into detail the CSS coding to change it (I will have a go at this at some point!). The page of my gallery also features a number of tags and keywords, which function for SEO purposes but do not provide a clean looking design. Overall, these are niggles and can be looked at over the period of the course.

To start looking at narrative, I have returned to Lewis Bush’s article ‘Photographic Storytelling: A Poverty of Theory’ (Bush, 2019)^​*​ discussing how photography overlooks the power of narrative in photography and often misunderstood by photographers. 

In the article, Bush also states that Narrative and story are different but often confused. 

“One Story can spawn many narratives”

(Bush, 2019)

It is clear that the sequencing of my work will have a fundamental impact on how it might be read, which leads me back to the ‘Authors’ vs ‘Readers’ debate referenced in this weeks readings and Barthes ‘Death of the Author’ (Barthes, 1977)^​†​ It feels that the emphasis is still on the reader of the work, however I can still maintain the control of the initial experience of the work.

Looking to develop skills in Narrative, sequencing, and the edit of my work, I continue to explore Bush’s article, and looked at the discussing that Bush was having on Twitter. There are a number of reference by Bush to ‘Narratology’ which is the study of narrative structure and how this can inform our perception. The article also discusses the strength of cinema in employing photographic theory in creating a strong narrative. These are areas that will continue to explore.

I have identified some further reading:

• Relationships between Text, Narrative and Image – An Introduction
• Gérard Genette : Narratology / Signo – Applied Semiotics Theories
• Basics creative photography 02: Context and narrative
• Image, Music, Text: Roland Barthes

Overall, I am going to keep the style and layout of the gallery that I have presented, maintaining the link that I have set up, and now focus now on the sequencing and amount of images that I am presenting, supported by the information.

Working on how my work is presented after reading the Kitchen from ‘Ways of Curating’^​*​ (Obrist and Raz̤ā, n.d.) and ‘Context as a Determinant of Photographic Meaning’^​†​ (Evans and John, 1997) I have started again to consider that context and how my work is read is somewhat out of my control. The readings reference the essay by Barthes ‘Death of the Author’^​‡​ which also starts to place the most value on the ‘reader’ as opposed to the ‘author’ of the work. I have discussed Barthes’ essay before and although I do agree with this statement, I question his argument for completely removing knowledge of the author of a work as this is not something that can be easily done, and once known, it does change how the work is read.

With that said, I have looked at presenting my work as minimal as possible on my website. Previously, I was utilising the mosaic format (Fig. 1), where the work is shown in full and on quite a busy page, together with any supporting information I felt should accompany the images. After considering the readings, and conducting some research into how other photographers are presenting their images online, I have made the decision to present the work in the form of a slider (Fig. 2), where the images are viewed individually (or in the case of my series ‘Four Prefectures of Japan’ which I have since edited into a slider, a juxtaposition of images). The information is initially hidden on the page and can be revealed as an option to the reader (Fig. 3 & 4). This, I hope, will allow viewers of my work time to assimilate it and form their own narratives before they consider the information and background to the work. That said, I still maintain a control of the work in the form of the sequencing and the display. Once the information has also been taken into consideration, the images may also change their meaning to the viewer and creating an enhanced experience.

Considering the work of others

Zed Nelson

Zed Nelson displays a lot of content on his website from his various projects. I looked in particular at how the project ‘Love Me’ is displayed (Fig. 5). There are 50 images in this gallery and are displayed individually with a click through button. There is a caption to accompany the work, together with a link to additional material such as the book, the information, and the thumbnails. The work here is presented well, however Nelson’s website is quite complicated to navigate with a lot of clicks and inconsistent with the menus. The overall feel of the site is good however with the images presented on a white background.

Laura El Tantawy

The work here is presented on a white background with a clean menu to the left of the images providing a good navigation through the work and the site. When a project is clicked on, the work is first presented all together, serving the function of the thumbnails (Fig 5). When an image is selected (Fig. 6), you are able to view the images one at a time and click through at your own pace. El Tantawy’s information is hidden with a button to click and view the written justification of the work. El Tantawy’s work is very much open to interpretation, and this I feel lends itself very well to that notion of the ‘reader.’

Audio and images

I spent some time collecting audio at some of the events that I have been photographing. I want to experiment and create some kind of experiential part to my work that gives a sense of the spectacle that these Carnivals present. To explore this further, I created a quick gallery (Low Resolution) of the abstract light images that I took in Frome and added the raw audio as an option to click and listen to whilst the images are transitioning through the set. The audio is an option to enhance the experience of viewing the images.

Exploring PDF presentation

As a hangover from my freelance days, I have also started to experiment with creating a PDF version of the project as a kind of book dummy/zine. I have created these in the past when I would use a PDF to promote my commercial practice. As another way to present the work, it is quite useful to start experimenting with different typeface and design elements. 

I looked at how I could represent the work using design and created a series of experiments, playing with the typeface and the colours of the carnival.

As we are expected to produce a simplified PDF of the images presented in the work in progress gallery, I am not sure if I will include these design element. Moving forward though I aim to continue exploring this as a promotional tool for the work.

Salisbury Carnival 24/10

I photographed Salisbury Carnival with the intention of capturing some of the big carts that are at their most spectacular when lit up at night. Unfortunately, the weather meant that many of the participants of this carnival stayed away and it was raining heavily during the time that I was shooting at the event. Of the images I did manage to capture, I am wondering how these will fit into the wider narrative of the project so far. The night shooting meant that I had to light the subject and this meant that I had some strong shadows to deal with which are a departure from the other portraits that I have been shooting.

I was fairly happy with the shot of the girl by the lorry and could see how more in this sort of style could work with the rest of the images.

Middlesbrough Dance Group 29/10

As an experiment into other ways of representing communities, I decided to take a studio kit on location whilst in Middlesbrough last week. These images are of a group of retirees who come together in Middlesbrough Library to a dance class in an attempt to combat the loneliness of this time.