Just a quick note to highlight what I think is an essential consideration for photographers, especially those who do photojournalism, street, and social documentary. I’ll call this the challenge of the moment, and it comes in various guises. One of those is the challenge to use whatever is at hand, at the moment, to help you tell the story.
Last Summer I was in Washington D.C. shooting the Lyrical Ambush gathering in Dupont Circle. Wonderful public event designed as artistic venue for expressing frustration with government policies, raising consciousness about social injustice, etc. It was quickly organized and carried out at the fountain park in the middle of Dupont Circle. There were various folks speaking, reciting beat poetry, playing instruments, and otherwise being creative and giving free rein to their inspiration and imagination.
As I was walking around shooting, I heard some members of the audience gathered say that they wish they could somehow participate, but that they didn’t have any talent. Oh, that certainly awakened a pet peeve, but most importantly — it was self-defeating before they even had a chance to explore what avenues they had for participation and self-expression. It seemed to me that they missed the ethos of the event, an ethos that was perhaps most clearly and succinctly stated in this statement in chalk:
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What more did they need? It is too easy to impose limit upon ourselves. That’s not to say that one can just wing everything, or that careful consideration, expertise, or equipment are not needed for excellence. It is however, to assert that the technical side of things is one aspect, and that much emerges from our willingness and inclination to be present and use what we have at our disposal — a central component being our imagination.
I always encourage students to tell their story with what they have at the moment. It doesn’t have to be the final version, it might not even be the story to tell. But nothing gets their creative “juices” flowing more than finding themselves on site and having to figure out how to compose and envision, imagine, and explore creatively, how to express what they need in diverse ways with whatever is available to them in the moment. That usually ignites their passion for the subject, and the project, even more.
Try it. Go for a walk and stop in a street corner, be present, how would you tell the story of a particular event or incident? In how many different ways? What are your tools for telling that story? If only standard and traditional plot arrangements come to mind, consider how you might re-story the dominant elements of that plot line. What other voices would you feature? If all you have is your camera phone — how might that perspective mediate the plot? Better yet, bring a friend and switch camera phones. What key scenic elements would you include? From what, or whose, perspective could you tell the story in non-traditional ways? The point is not always the final product in this kind of exercise.
“Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.” ~ Adam Michnik
