Introduction

Reading through the introduction section in the OCA’s Context & Narrative course book I thought it would be appropriate to take a few moments to summarise that section and reflect a little of what the aims of the course are in the eyes of the OCA – I guess focus on what the broad meaning is of “Context and Narrative.

Context: noun

the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.

The context of a photograph and its surroundings are fundamental to how it comes to exist and how it is consumed. No Photograph exists without a purpose, the meaning of a photograph is influenced by what surrounds it – and not just its physical location.

The above is a direct quote from the course manual and think this says a lot in just a few words – there is more to photography than just a quick snap, there is always a reason behind it.

These course manual goes on to say that as photographers we should also be careful that the messages within our images don’t convey an unintended meaning.

We should aim to become a thinking photographers rather than the masses joining every trend, new camera etc.

Context is just the geographical placement of a picture – although this is important, it’s the ideological positioning of the photograph (or series of photographs) and as such to understand this we are encouraged to research other photographers work both individually and in comparison, to one and other to get a sense of context and how we as individual photographers or artist fit into contemporary photography.

Narrative:noun

a spoken or written account of connected events; a story “a gripping narrative”
the practice or art of telling stories.
a representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values.

Individual photographs and series of photographs hold within them their own narratives i.e. what’s in the frame. What the OCA means by narrative is the visual flow, the coherence of the set of images or construction of a single image.

With the frame of any photograph are elements that make up the narrative – the photographer builds on these elements to back up the general flow of the narrative but this is necessarily linear, these can be manipulated for example consider Pulp Fiction (1994) Dir. Quentin Tarantino. However, the overall narrative must be consistent, the OCA reminds us we should see patterns in our images which uphold our overarching ideas – a way of linking the images together to create the narrative.

Photography holds a close relationship to literature and film, the narrative has to hold together; so, as much as we might want to emulate Tarantino and Pulp Fiction we need to have very good reason for doing so i.e.

“You do not have to conform to standard narrative approaches, but if you’re to push the boundaries it’s important to understand why you’re doing so rather that submitting a random selection of disparate images that don’t hold together as a narrative.”

Single photographs contain within them visual codes that carry meaning very much like the mis-en-scène in a movie. These are there generally for a reason; even in straight documentary i.e. where element maybe by chance rather than design they become significant in the final reading of the image as they become fixed I frame and subject to lifelong scrutiny.

The OCA reminds us that as photographers we’re aware of what we are photographing and even if we see something in our images that wasn’t intended, we’re critical enough to make sense of it later.

Summary

As photographers, if we are alert to both the broad context (outside frame) and specific narratives (within the frame) of photographs we will develop the mean to delve deeper into creating and understanding meaning photography (art).

Context and Narrative enable us as photographers to produce projects expending upon our personal vision and begin formulating our personal voice.

Bibliography

Open College of the Arts (2015) Context & Narrative: course handbook. (2015). Barnsley: OCA.