Anne Darling - Storytelling with Photographs: How to Create a Photo Essay

Simply put, a photo essay is a way of telling a story through a series of photographs, by one photographer, and may be as little as three or four images or as many as 20-30 or even more. A picture story, on the other hand, is usually a series of photographs by two or more photographers.

The images in a photo essay are ordered in a specific way, often chronologically or as a series, with the aim of engaging the viewers emotions as well as their mind. Captions may be used to help the audience understand the individual images but the text is always subordinate to the pictures. In other words, the images do not illustrate the text, the text supports the images.

The sequencing of a photo essay is often, but not always, ordered in such a way that a narrative evolves, much the same way as a narrative in a spoken or written story evolves. Documentary photographers and photojournalists often use the photo essay to show how events have unfolded, to convey strong emotions and engage the viewer in interesting concepts. James Nachtwey, Mary Ellen Mark, Sebastio Salgado and Peter Magubane are documentary photographers who have all used the photo essay to great effect.

So try to think of the photo essay as being something like a theatre piece. The images have actors and a setting in which events unfold. As the photographer, you are the director and can choose which actors you want in your story, which scenes you want include, and how you will arrange them. The choices you can make are limitless.

There are many photographs which you might think tell a story by themselves such as Eddie Adams Pulitzer Prize-winning image of the South Vietnams Chief of National Police, called General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, in which a handcuffed prisoner called Lm, who was suspected of being a member of the Viet Cong is being summarily shot in the street. The photograph won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and became an iconic image of the anti-war movement.

The execution was horrific and arguably the world at large needed to witness the event but Adams later said he regretted the impact the photograph had made. To the public, this was a savage act and people reacted with revulsion towards Loan. Sympathy was with Lm who seems to be standing there helplessly with his hands tied behind his back as the bullet passed through his brain.

Loan claimed that the shooting had not been a rash act, as it appeared, but that it had been carried out because he believed that people like Lm were killing Loans own people. He believed it had to be done and was totally justified within the context of the war.

As a result of the publication of this photograph, Loans reputation was destroyed and his family was badly affected. Adams said that people believe photos, but that photos do lie, even when not manipulated in post processing. In Adams own words They are only half-truths because what the photo doesnt tell you is why Loan shot the man, and to this day it is still unclear.

A photograph can make you believe that it is the truth, even when only half the facts are present in the image, which of necessity must be the case as an image is merely a moment in time. Never assume that the knowledge you have of an event is obviously present in your photo always get feedback from others, people who you trust will be honest in their appraisal.

Because a single image shows us just one moment in time there cannot be a progressive narrative as this would rely on there being a past and a future as well. The events which you witness when taking a photograph take place in time. However, unlike a film or a book, a single photo taken within that time stream will not have a narrative because everything within the scene is presented simultaneously to the viewer. A photograph does not tell a story, it shows us events. This is an important distinction.