CONTACT SHEET - the secret of creative photography - AL GRUEN

CONTACT SHEET - The Secret Of Creative Photography - (Al Gruen) 

I got a book out of the library after we were shown the Magnum contact sheet book in Jason and Karin's lecture as it had similar content.

When I looked through it I found something all the more useful and relevant. A section called "The picture story." (section 11 page 153 - 173)

Below I have typed up some sections of the text which I feel will help me develop this project and understand the elements of picture stories that make them especially prevalent in editorial photography.

" "One picture is worth a thousand words." Is a cliche. Like all cliches, is it boring and exasperating because it is only a fragment of a truth and is putting on airs. "

"Telling stories, pictures need words more than words need pictures. Individual pictures are too 

specific to carry a narrative. Picture a girl standing in front of a jewellery store. She is wearing a fur 

coat In the left background, a stout man is walking a Doberman. The girl is pretty-if you like the type.

What the picture can't tell you is that the girl's name is Mona. She is only eighteen and came to Paris to 

model. She grew up in Lancashire, England, where she lived with her family in rooms behind her 

father's butcher shop. She is waiting for her new lover, a man of forty, whom she met only a few weeks 

before at a party. The man walking the dog is an agent of her lover's wife. The agent is about to kill 

Mona with silenced Luger."

"Photographs of pretty girls tend to resemble other photographs of pretty girls, just as pictures of 

mountains look like other pictures of mountains. To tell a story the pictures need worlds to work with 

them. A photograph of a pretty girl captioned "rape victim" tells a different story than the same photograph with the words, "tennis champion." "

"A picture story is a specific genre with it's own strictures, requirements, disciplines, strengths and weaknesses. It is a mixed medium, combining pictures and words in and idiosyncratic synthesis."

I included the top sections of text as I found them extremely interesting and although at first I didn't really agree as I further delved into it the clearer it became and I really understood the true connection between word and image, I understood that although an image can tell a story (the section I initially disagreed with, before given the rest of the writing chance to justify) there are specifics within and entwined whiten that story that an image can next really truly express. Without text assumptions about the image are instant.

All of the above was interesting to me in relation to the extended captions we have been asked to provide for our final images. What I aim to do is make my captions informative and rich with facts which cannot be assumed from the image.