Narrative

FMP Sequences

| Phil Hill

As I am making a book project, I am considering the number of images that I should include to properly realise my narrative. Looking at the photobooks of others, I have seen a great variety in the number of photographs present and suggests to me that this should always be based on the subject and the way that they are flowing together. For example, two quite different examples of Rinko Kawauchi’s ‘Illuminance’ (2011) and Pieter Hugo’s ‘kin’ (2015) both contain 80 images, presented very differently.

Figure 1: Rinko Kawauchi (2011) Double Page Spread from ‘Illuminance’
Figure 2: Rinko Kawauchi (2011) Double Page Spread from ‘Illuminance’

Kawauchi’s practice explore elements of beauty contained within the banal elements of everyday life and the design of her books actively reflects this, which build on one another to create this sense of luminescence. Nearly all of the book is presented as uncut pages of square diptych’s (Fig: 1&2). 80 images in this format with the occasional single page to break up the pacing becomes experiential upon interacting with it.

Figure 3: Pieter Hugo (2015) Double Page Spread from ‘Kin’

Hugo uses differing sized pages, which overlap and create interesting collages of people, environment, and object (Fig: 3). Kin has the same number of images as Kawauchi’s book but feels very different because of the sheer variety of content. Hugo’s book is formed from a long-term project which considers the problematic history of his home, South Africa. The overlapping pages add to this sense of how nuanced and layered everything is once you begin to look closely at it.

Both these books function well in relaying their story to the reader, even within the high number of images that they include. During a discussion with Bryan Schutmaat and Matthew Genitempo, they discussed the photo book and suggested that books with 70 plus images rarely communicate effectively. Schutmaat, who has produced some highly successful books of his own and also run Trespasser Publishing with Genitempo, advocate for a tighter edit of around 40 photographs making for a much more effective narrative (Schutmaat & Genitempo, 2021).

My image sequences

Figure 4: Phil Hill (August, 2021) Two image ‘micro sequence’ from ‘Unreliable Narrator.’ Bullet Casings [Left] and cut images from the Spanish Holiday [Right].

For my project, 40 images is actually a good number to work with. My Unreliable narrator narrative needs to include ambiguity and mystery. It should also consider adding misdirection as a tool to lead the reader through the story but also hint at connections between images that may not necessarily exist. Elements of the sequence do also relate to the story that I wrote. For example, I make reference to the Spanish holiday where everything changed after (Hill, 2021), so I added another cut image from this holiday that was in the archive. I also juxtaposed this image with some discarded bullet casings (Fig: 4), which my brother found metal detecting. The suggestion that this is a kind of smoking gun piece of evidence by placing them together. It is also important to note that the background is different to the blue of the other still life images, to create a link to that change and pace in the written story. This is also after considering the idea of Barthes ‘Micro-Sequences’ within the larger narrative (1977, p. 103).

Effectively, I have designed a narrative presenting a number of options for the reader to form conclusions based on their own inherent bias from the evidential value of the photographed objects and also any of the characters within the sequence that a reader may make connections. Some of which is referenced in the text, and other, which are purposefully not referred to at all although still completely relevant to the project. This is so that the text and images don’t become illustrative of each other. As pointed out by Geoff Dyer this can lead to reducing the narrative potential of either element (2021). Therefore, some of the images are working with the text to reveal elements of the unreliable narration and others are there to suggest that everything is still unreliable and ambiguous enough to create a level of intrigue

Figure 5: Phil Hill (August, 2021) Two Garden Incinerators used to destroy documents
Figure 6: Phil Hill (August, 2021) Shredded Paper in bag and Water Fountain image pasted to window sequence.

I have been very much interested in the mystery, which is built through the image sequence, I feel that I have managed to achieve this here. For example, I included both images of the incinerators (Fig: 5), which feels quite surreal followed by the bag of shredded paper on the next page (Fig: 6). I enjoy the juxtaposition of the bag of paper next to the image of the water fountain placed in the window (Fig: 6) to connect it to the belief system that my family hold. Aesthetically they connect through the materials of the printing paper in different states. I had more images of the fountain however felt that with the placement of both incinerators, it would be better to hint at the superstition aspect of my parents’ beliefs, especially as my project developed. The four images I think work well as another micro sequence in the way that they play with the idea of materials and evidence (shredded paper), fuel for the fire (incinerators), and the image of water to close.

Dear Sarah & Derick [sic],

Thought of you two when I picked this card out – hoping of course this will never happen to you. Hope everything is ok. Give my Brucey a kiss. Weather isn’t too special here worse luck never mind.

Sarah can you tell the man that calls around for Simon’s money that he hasn’t been very well and that the doctor advised him to take a holiday with us. You can tell him that Simon caught whooping cough badly and it was the last minute he had to go with us – on doctors orders. Can you tell him that­. Thanks.

Much Love Mum xxx

Figure 7: Phil Hill (April, 2021) Postcard from Archive and transcribed message [right]

I have intentionally added images of objects from the archive to build this mystery. The postcard for example has always intrigued me with its message that feels like it’s trying to convince someone over the normal use for a postcard to talk about the weather, the food, and location whilst on holiday where it begins. The message on this one is suggestive of something else happening in the background (Fig: 7)

I have sought the opinion of others to support my edit, my peers have been really valuable in supporting the sequencing of the work. One of my Peers, Tim Stubbs-Hughes said:

Your FMP is so detailed and you can clearly feel and see the profound journey you have been on, from the initial direction you started with – I can remember back in Feb you talking about and then the discoveries on the way. The photography and text is personal and beautiful. But what really lifts everything is the attention to detail. Not only in the work but how you are intending to present it, either in its book or exhibition format. Great great work.

(Stubbs-Hughes, 2021)

Followed by Ross Trevail, who suggested that I include my story as it is presented as the intended for the publication:

the images all look really good. Love the new portraits I hadn’t seen before. The only thing I wondered was whether spreading out the Latchkey Kids essay over a few more pages. I found it a lot to look at when over 2 columns. Maybe the writing on the book dummies could be spread over a couple more pages as well to give it a bit of room. It’s great though, really strong work.

(Trevail, 2021).
Bibliography

Barthes, R., 1977. Image, Music, Text. Translation edition ed. London: Fontana.

Dyer, G., 2021. Coversation with Geoff Dyer – Falmouth Flexible [Interview] (8 July 2021).

Hill, P., 2021. The Latchkey Kids. [Online]
Available at: https://philhillphotography.com/sketchbook/2021/07/24/the-latchkey-kids-narrative-development/
[Accessed 24 July 2021].

Hugo, P., 2015. Kin. 1 ed. New York: Aperture.

Kawauchi, R., 2011. Illuminance. 1 ed. New York: Aperture.

Schutmaat, B. & Genitempo, M., 2021. A Small Voice, Conversations with Photographers: 155 – Matthew Genitempo & Bryan Schutmaat [Interview] (26 May 2021).

Stubbs-Hughes, T., 2021. Whatsapp Direct Message. [Online]

Trevail, R., 2021. Whatsapp Direct Message. [Online]

Narrative Sequences

| Phil Hill

Narrative has always been a key element of my project. The way that the story is told influences how it is going to be read. As Barthes acutely points out when he breaks down what the narrative is: “a hierarchy of instances” (1977: 87), therefore to understand a narrative is not to merely follow the unfolding story (Effectively creating a chronological order of events with my images). It is also to recognise the construction of all of the various elements to create meaning and present the different levels towards its conclusion.

Unreliable Narrative – Archive Database

Figure 1: Phil Hill (April, 2021) Unreliable Narrator – Archive Database spread sheet showing image captions

At the start of the project, I was approaching it in a way that would focus on documenting the evidence that I was discovering. This was clearly a disparate approach as I did not really know what I had in front of me. In order to construct my story, it was important to collect everything together. This came with some of its own challenges in the sense that my catalogue of objects and images, especially from the archive, were captioned in a very descriptive way meaning that I was eroding the ambiguity of the image and the way that it might be individually read (Fig: 1).

Figure 2: Phil Hill (June, 2021) Sequencing collected quotes
Figure 3: Phil Hill (June, 2021) Sequencing collected quotes

However, once I was in the position to know much more about the story I was going to be telling, I was able to reflect on the captions and create something that was personal to the story but ambiguous enough to allow the reader to form their own connections with the work. I worked to edit the captions from the descriptive into the emotive and to be part of the story. I had been collecting quotes from my family as I had been photographing them and was planning to add these within the sequence of the work however, iterations of this edit were becoming confused and it was felt that I need to define the voice of each element, which solidified the decision to lose the descriptive caption (Fig: 2&3). From here, I felt that I could use the quotes as captions but this was still locking down the images with the text and forcing readings of it that should remain open to interpretation.

The more I began to consider ways that I could sequence the images, the more I felt it important to do the same with the quotes too. Although, I have only used a few in the final sequence it was fundamental to the understanding of my narrative that I also consider the same rules for the text. Referring to Barthes narrative analysis, he suggests that each element becomes a ‘micro-sequence’ (p. 103) which I discussed earlier (Fig: 4), forming the larger narrative and this gives me the framework to consider the text and the image are also sequences in their own right before attempting to put them together.

Book Updates
Figure 4: Phil Hill (July, 2021) Book development post discussing the idea of the micro sequence

Within the body of the book, the only text will be the title of ‘Unreliable Narrator’ and the following quotes:

  • Why do you keep a photograph that wounds so deeply?
  • You have to realise that I live a rather strange life at the moment, which one day might change.
  • This… is not going to trouble me anymore.

These create one of the micro-sequences, which constructs the whole narrative. Another one being the incidental object of the reproduced negative that I discussed in the book update post (Fig: 4) and also the themselves.

Figure 5: Phil Hill (August, 2021) Unreliable Narrator V7 digital dummy showing ‘The Latchkey Kids’ text at the end of the sequence.

I also reflected on the feedback that I was receiving about the project, which suggested much of the intrigue from the project was from the way that I was talking about the images. I wanted to create an account of my journey of discovery and also add in some personal reflections so wrote a short story. However, I didn’t want the work to become solely about my written text so it has been placed at the end of the work (Fig: 5). This is so that the reader can view the work with little to contextualise it in the first instance. The idea is that a reader’s own bias and way of interpreting the world informs the way that the narrative is understood. After reading the short story, they can then return to the images and see additional connections between the images, or ‘Easter eggs’ that may not have happened on the initial reading. This then I with the understanding that the story is my interpretation of the narrative and could very well be something else entirely if another person wrote it.

As Barthes points out: “A sequence is a logical succession of nuclei bound together by a relation of solidarity” (1977: 101), which is how I have attempted to structure my sequence for this project in the smaller elements that come together.

The question of the Unreliable Narrator remains. Who is the Unreliable Narrator? This depends on the interpretation of the narrative but I consider the way that individuals might draw conclusive ideas of what they think is happening within the sequence of images creates the idea that we are all unreliable especially if after reading the short story, these conclusions might be unfounded.

I considered photography an unreliable narrator, which it still relevant. The camera itself could even be the unreliable narrator. The camera that recorded the image which was then cut, recorded that image in its complete rectangle frame. It has the knowledge of what was in the part of the frame that the audience is unable to know. If the camera could be considered as a form or narrator, merely retelling a story to an audience through visual means then we can consider the impartiality of this narration. Is it impartial? James Wood suggests that within literature omniscience is impossible as the narrative will start to bend around a character, crucially: “wants to merge with that character to take on his or her way of thinking and speaking” (2019, p. 16). How this is relevant to the camera as narrator is the way that its narration would ultimately be impacted by the person using the tool firstly, and then by the way that it records the objects/persons/’characters’ – “Omnicient narration is rarely as omniscient as it seems” (p. 15).

Photographs are constructions in composition and framing, yet can be perceived as record and objective. The cut photograph interrupts this by cropping the photograph further, albeit abruptly. This is effectively no different from the act of framing when the photograph was taken, the key difference is the space in time between the initial framing and the subsequent edit of the photograph. These two points form another one of Barthes micro-sequences: “the sequence opens when one of its terms has solidarity antecedent and closes when another of its terms has no consequent” (1977: 101), which for the reader is where the absence of the photograph causes the questions of what happened to be raised. In Barthes analysis of the narrative there are functions that serve the broader narrative. For example, in the case of the family photograph, the act of taking it serves the function of the collective family record and is something that is universally understood. It’s defacement then impacts this understanding

Bibliography

Barthes, R., 1977. Image, Music, Text. Translation edition ed. London: Fontana.

Wood, J., 2019. How Fiction Works. Revised Edition ed. London: Vintage.

Narrative Development

| Phil Hill

To develop my narrative, I felt that it was important to write down my process of discovery. I have found this to be really valuable in considering how the images are going to be sequenced. This account also serves to place me into the story as it creates a chronicle of my journey and discovery, albeit not necessarily in chronological order. Key feedback has been to develop the initial way that I had been captioning the images, which was considered to be too narrow in terms of how the images are being read. My use of quotes subsequently went very much the other way and created an open reading of the work that left too many questions. This story aims to redress the balance. My intention is to place this towards the end of the book, so that the images and quotes can be looked at first and then the story can be read. This way the viewer can then return to the images and have elements revealed to them that they may have missed on an initial viewing of the work:

The Latchkey Kids

The Latchkey Kids PDF

Who Narrates?

| Phil Hill

Although he is strictly writing about the structure of the written narrative, James Wood in his book ‘How Fiction Works’ provides a strong set of parameters on how to utilise narration within a story (2019). This is useful for me to reflect on as my body of work will be heavily reliant on sequencing a strong narrative that uses a ‘narrator’ effectively.

There are a couple of key takeaways for me in Wood’s discussion on the unreliable narrator. Referring to W.G. Sebald he notes the way that worlds are created in which the rules are already widely known by everyone reading the book, which then leads to an opportunity to undermine this world, these rules, in a way that the reader knows that the narration is unreliable (2019:14). This is also in reference to the way that Barthes highlighted nineteenth century writers who would use common cultural or scientific knowledge as a way of a short cut (p. 16). Photography in a sense creates these shortcuts by the visual language present in the image however it is important not to overlook this fact. My project and photography exist in the world but some elements may not be acceptable to all that view it. I will want to construct a world through the sequence, which at first is familiar but has a number of features that starts to undermine and unravel the accepted rules of the world. I will need to define the rules of my world that I am presenting to you. As Wood puts it: “reliable manipulation” (2019:15) of the narrative to create the sense of the unreliable narrator.

The question for my work is who is going to be the narrator? Will it be me, one of the people photographed, or another character not seen? Wayne C. Booth places an emphasis on the distance between the characters of a narrative and the author (1975: 155). Wood notes: “As soon as someone tells a story about a character, narrative seems to want to bend itself around that character, wants to merge with that character, to take on his or her way of thinking and speaking” (2019, p. 16), which suggests that the distance is created automatically by the reader of the work. I see my role in constructing the world in which the narrator operates, although I am not sure on who will be identified as the ‘narrator,’ I don’t think it will be me and will be created from the quotes that I have been collecting about the work. Perhaps the main reason for me not being considered as narrator, is as Wood notes: “first person narration is generally more reliable than unreliable; and third-person ‘omnicient’ narration is generally more partial than omniscient” (p. 14). For my work of photography, the reader is less able to suspend disbelief of my authorship, which would draw attention to and increase the artifice associated with this construction – leading to a poor execution of the concept. If as Wood is suggesting that the third-person is actually more unreliable and bias, then effectively, the narrator can be made from the text that accompanies the images.

Bibliography

Booth, W. C., 1975. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 11 ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Wood, J., 2019. How Fiction Works. Revised Edition ed. London: Vintage.