The Single Image: Can you find the story?
It has become fashionable and almost expected to publish a ‘zine’ or book of photographic work or to fill a website with photographs for others to view.
Born to Witness, Cobourg 2025
The ‘collection’ of images is the black hat in this reflection. In a world dominated by photographs, hard drives filled to their digital brim and gallery collections, books and artists’ archives tend to dominate our man-made visual space.
I’m frustrated with these collections. Often, they don’t enhance the individual voices of their respective images. For decades, I have worked to look for and capture moments that transcend the snapshot purposefully. I look for those juxtapositions of environment and people for most of my life.
The solo image that has stood as a beacon of story earns prominence through exposure. Its gravitas expands with acceptance, recall, sharing, and interpretation. Its relevance grows over time. Fundamentally, a photograph can reach into the hearts and minds of the spectator, engaging them, or not.
While I also enjoy collections, books, zines, and the like, I consider the efforts of individual image creation, curation, and presentation by the artist. The larger groupings of images can dilute and almost obscure a solo image’s story. Any nuance nullified. I find this less so when viewing a gallery exhibition, especially if the show’s curator is sympathetic to the work. Similarly, a collection of work found in books can amplify the story, but all too often, a story thread will either not exist or suffer interruptions from images that don’t belong. It may be the lack of a critical eye for one’s work, or not engaging an editor/curator to find story threads within the work.
Oh yes, there are exceptions. Images held in concert with others can support each other, work to refine and further define the narrative, and visually reinforce it. Curated well, the collection can sing. I feel that is the purpose of the collections, regardless of the mode of presentation. Retrospective books wouldn’t necessarily fall into this category, but a good editor will often pass over the chronology of the work and sympathize with any story across the collection.
But here’s the rub: if a single image has gone through its evolution of “previsualization”, composition, timing, curation, processing and presentation, should it not be celebrated for itself? This question is not easily answered with anything other than time as an adjudicator. When you consider the moments captured in fractions of a second, why would a single image draw minutes of people’s time? What makes them value the photograph as a story?
The images that pull us in, engage and transfix our attention are the gems, and one must concede. Those rare moments, such as Alfred Eisenstaedt’s – The Kiss, Diane Arbus’ – Boy with Hand-grenade, or Steve McCurry’s portrait of the National Geographic Cover – Afghanistan girl, Sharbat Gula, have all touched millions of eyes, eliciting contemplation and sharing of emotions. It almost does a disservice to include these images in a collection, at least one that doesn’t undergo sympathetic consideration of story.
One of my absolute favourite books and consequently, a collection of photos, has to be Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Walker Evans and James Agee. While I maintain a copy of the book on my bedside table and read Agee’s words from time to time, I cannot help but thumb through Walker Evans’s photographs. Together, the images assuredly tell a story of poverty, struggle, family and a state of the nation as it applied to the ‘Dust Bowl’ farm community. Evans’ photos validate James’ account. While there is a story in each photo, the collection of images elevates our interpretation of this very time. I’m convinced that this is when a collection of images enhances the single-image story.
When creating photos, I strive to make a connection for myself. Once I believe my intent of the story comes full circle with an image, I hope it will engage others. Through the working of themes, maybe subsequent collections will emerge, but hopefully, they will not weaken the testiment of any one image. If it enhances the story, I, too, will consider it amongst other images.
