Narratives Part 1

stories

What are narratives?

When we’re little kids, our parents read them to us. In school, we learn about fiction narratives in English and non-fiction ones in History. Sometimes we’ll even pay $10 to sit in a dark room with a couple hundred people to watch a 3 hour narrative. They follow us throughout our life.

For those of you that know me, much of my photography is based around narratives. Even for photos that are not obviously a narrative, there’s always something hidden that you can find. I’ve always tried to use that in looking for the right photograph to take.

Half the point of art is for the viewer to interpret and to find or make up their own narrative for the work. It only needs to make sense for the one person interpreting the piece at that particular time.

For instance, look at the clashing of old architecture and modern technology. What kind of story could be construed for this photo? Yes, this could easily be a car commercial, but maybe it’s a time machine, traveling to the ruins of medieval cities.


This man could be doing the only thing he knows how to do to help him survive. He goes fishing everyday in search of the evenings dinner. Or maybe he’s just relaxing after a long day at the office.

If you can come up with any narratives of your own for these photos, leave them in the comments section!

Check back next week for the second part of this series.

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