anotherview Loc: California

Another suggested I start this topic: "Every photograph tells a story."

Of course, a photograph cannot do so, in the conventional sense, because photography functions as a wordless medium of human expression.

At the same time, a photograph has a visual voice. We must evaluate any photograph in terms of its visual presentation.

Granted, a given photography may generate a narrative of some kind owing to its content. Yet, consider that over time the shift in cultural values may result in a perception significantly different from that one occurring earlier. In turn, the narrative will change, as it must do for conforming to its time.

The dogma of the storytelling of a photograph rests on the false assumption that another era to follow will exercise the same biases of consciousness as the past era.

Consider also that this dogma may influence a beginning photographer to believe that his photography lacks some value because another says it fails to tell a story. The beginner may struggle to do the impossible, to produce a photograph that tells a story.

This photographer respectfully asks writers of material regarding photography to stop typing the falsity that every photograph tells a story. Instead, guide others along the path to producing worthy photographs using photographic techniques.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Maybe it's a quantum thing. Taking a superposition and being in multiple states at once....

I do think that every picture tells a story, but whether it is a story worth telling is another matter. Perhaps every picture shouldn't be a picture, or at least not one with a published presence.

Some bad photographs tell a good story merely because they exist. Sometimes good photographs have nothing to say...

Maybe the combination can produce great photographs in the right circumstances.

False? I don't think so, but valuable and worth telling could be a different discussion.

Fred Harwood Loc: Sheffield, Mass.

Might the story belong to the photographer, as talented as may be? When I review our life in photos, the thousands tell much about a story now running three living generations. It also has the pulse of love on a Swiss Alp, the quick run before the wind under a spinnaker, the deep dive in the South China Sea, etc., all evocative of two or more lives. Of course, one might exclusively be interested in a photograph, to the exclusion of personality, but, I hope, that while alive, all of our photos tell personal and professional learning stories. Why else share?

Rongnongno Loc: FL

A question... How many stories a photograph can tell depending not only on the viewer but on how it is cropped?

anotherview Loc: California

General rule: A photograph cannot tell a story in the conventional sense because a photograph functions solely within a visual medium of human expression.

Consider the matter this way: A sculpture and a photograph both exist by way of a visual medium of human expression, the sculpture in three dimensions and the photograph in two dimensions. Neither one by itself tells a story.

Yet both speak to us in what I call a visual voice. We might say the artwork that "speaks" this way also may convey a message or a meaning peculiar to the viewer or even to an audience.

The meaning or the message of a photograph or of a sculpture imparts itself via the operation of human perception minus wordplay. No two humans, no two cultures, and no two historical eras will perceive a given piece of artwork in the same way. They cannot owing to the complexity of human experience which affects perception.

We all know of course that if the artist or a schooled individual describes the artwork using words, then a viewer or an audience listening to this description may better appreciate the artwork. These words, however, emit from a source whose own perception prompts this teaching in words. The artwork did not itself tell a story; a human did while under the influence of the artwork.

Yes, a collection of photographs may produce or enhance an understanding in the viewer, and especially so when this collection pertains to a known subject either in the moment or over time. But this understanding develops minus words, although of course the use of words may contribute to it.

The falsity of the dogma that every photograph tells a story apparently arose from the field of photojournalism which uses photographs in conjunction with text to sell newsworthy stories. This practice only points out all the more that photographs alone do not tell a story. Here, they illustrate a story.

The old saying that “A picture is worth a thousands words” does not equate photography and storytelling. On the contrary, it shows that seeing for ourselves informs us properly despite all the words. The picture has its own visual value awaiting the viewer to perceive it.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Perhaps you have a very limited and literal perception of a story, just think of words....

Maybe every picture had a journey would open it up a little....

anotherview Loc: California

A photograph tells not a single story in the conventional sense. Instead, a photograph speaks to a viewer in a visual voice using visual means.

The use of the word "story" in relation to the claim of a photograph as a storytelling vehicle assumes that an equality of seeing and saying exists. No such quality exists, but the two means of communicating may go together to inform and to entertain.

Yes, the content of a photograph can vary by cropping the photograph to omit something. Doing so will change the photograph and how it informs the viewer. And yes, every viewer may perceive the photograph in his own way. After all, we know we differ each of us from all others.

If photographs were permitted here, then I would post one of my bare landscape photographs to prove my point, by asking viewers to give their impression of it. But do a thought problem instead. Take such a photograph from memory and ask its story. It will have none in words. It may, however, evoke a feeling or an emotion or a sense of pleasure from the visual beauty of it. It may simply please the eye for a long time. There you have the power of a photograph apart from any words.

anotherview Loc: California

I separate two mediums of human expression: (1) the visual and (2) the written or spoken word.

As used today by some photographers and writers, however, the word "story" has telescoped these two mediums. This collapsing of the two into one misleads and produces a wrong understanding of the purpose of a photograph.

In turn, this distortion can negatively affect the work of others who strive to generate the impossible result of a photograph telling a story when it never can. The persistence of the merging of the two mediums of expression into one thus harms.

So my position serves more than an academic view. It calls for a stop to spreading the falsity that every photograph tells a story.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Post away, this is YOUR thread.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I see it differently and view your point as a somewhat artificial construct. I tend to think of words, visuals, music and dance to be forms of expression that can all be intertwined.

Maybe that is a different saga...

blackest Loc: Ireland

So your essential argument is due to a lack of words there is no story?
Communication can occur where people do not share a common language. Between people and animals and animals and animals.
Sometimes its obvious that say two people are in love for example. There doesn't need to be words. In fact love is perhaps one of the hardest things to put into words.

Perhaps in some ways it is better not to have words and to draw your own interpretation rather than have someone else do it for you.

I would agree not every photo tells a story or has one worth looking for, but photographs that engage the viewer are building a story, it may be fiction rather than fact but there is something there.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

Thank you. The idea that every photograph has a story is pure bunk. Some do have stories to tell, while others are simply pleasing photos, easy to look at. I think it's hard to find a bird picture that tells a story, or most of the landscape work. They are simply nice images.

Bazbo Loc: Lisboa, Portugal

The best photographs allow the viewer to supply their own story. Every photograph does not have a story for me (in fact few do). But who am I to say that there is no story there for someone else?

Any photograph that provokes thought or emotion in the viewer has a story. For someone. Somewhere.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

If you're making up your own story, that's your imagination. If the photo actually tells a story, then the story is in the photo, not in the beholder's head. There's a big difference.

blackest Loc: Ireland

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-kill-billions-every-year not your usual bird photo but it does have a story to it I think.