Photo essays for critical reflection

Introduction

This resource introduces you to the photo essay - its forms and its purposes. We look at examples of classic photo essays from the heyday of photojournalism to more recent times with the flourishing of immersive web-based stories. And then we move to photo essays which have a reflective purpose in which images are interrogated by the essayist to explore our relationship with cultural practices. It is this critical and reflective form that we examine in some depth to see how it serves an academic purpose - the photo essay assignment.

A little history

The ‘classic’ photojournalism essay

In Patrick Sutherland's insightful overview of the photo essay for Visual Anthropology Review, he explains that its narrative documentary form is most closely associated with 'mass-circulation illustrated magazines, in particular LIFE magazine in the United States' (2016, p.115).

For a fine example, here are three images from a renowned photo essay in which photographer Eugene Smith chronicles the everyday experiences of a doctor on his rounds in rural America during the 1940s.

Country Doctor: Eugene Smith, Life Magazine, 1948

You can see all of Eugene Smith's landmark Country Doctor essay here.

Looking through Smith's essay, the narrative power of each image is striking but what is also noteworthy is that the images work in combination with other images to propel a story forward. Here is Sutherland (2016) again:

Classic magazine photo essays are primarily image-led, presenting a mix of photographs, captions, typography, and short pieces of text in layouts spread over several pages. They operate as a form of collage, with images being read individually and also within a wider visual narrative. The effect of photo essays therefore depends not only upon the constituent images themselves but also on their interaction, the sequencing from the beginning of the essay to the end, as well as on the juxtapositions and contrasts established on the page.'

More recent forms of the photo essay

Modern-day examples of the kind of photo essay pioneered in Life magazine (and Picture Post in the UK) are plentiful. As we might expect, the interactivity of the web adds an extra dimension of engagement. Here is a scrollable story by photojournalist Andrew Quilty about his encounters with the people of Afghanistan over 28 days.

For another example, the site PhotoVoice enables marginalised people around the world to tell their stories via participatory photo essays. Here is a set of photos that aim to provoke positive change for LGBTQ people in Uganda.

And here is an extraordinarily compelling photo essay-memoir in which a documentary maker discusses photos of his childhood growing up in Zaire. Unlike the other examples, each image is accompanied by audio commentary rather than text. Watch it till the end - the final frame packs a punch.

The photo essay as an ethnographic tool

The photo essay can be used by ethnographers to study cultural practices - an approach where the photographer is a 'participant observer'. In such essays, the photographer may explore the behaviour and customs of their subjects but also reflect on their own behaviour and responses.

Becoming Luis: A Photo Essay on Growing up in Bolivia

In Becoming Luis, ethnographer Jerome Crowder reflects on his relationship with the growing years of his subject - a boy, Luis - and his family in La Paz, Bolivia. This reflection, 15 years after the photos were taken, distinguishes 'the threads, knots, warps, and wefts that make up the family fabric and their migration experience' but also speaks to a 'collaboration, which has had a lasting impact on all of us' (2013, p.122).

Here is one image from the essay with accompanying text.

Luis is held by a “Gringa” while being baptized in La Paz (where all of the other children in the family of that generation have been baptized). Basilia asked the Gringa researcher to be her “co-madre” because she thought the Gringa would have the means to help her support Luis over the years, as is appropriate for god- parents to do. The Gringa agreed in order to cultivate trust with the family, and so that they would help her develop further contacts within the community and expand her social network. Once she completed her research, however, the Gringa did not maintain contact with Basilia or Luis, although they have tried to contact her many times (and thus her image is intentionally anonymized to protect her identity).

Only a few close family members who live in La Paz attended Luis’s baptism, but many other guests travelled to the campo for the following celebration. Baptisms and other family-based rituals are excellent opportunities for ethnographic photography as immediate and extended family members usually attend and expect to be photographed or videotaped (depending upon expense). While at the church, I only photographed our family as to not irritate the photographers there trying to make a living; however, once at the house, I was given free rein to document everyone enjoying the festivities.

Crowder comments on how text and image work together:

My intent was that the text would provide background and personal information to expand Luis’s story beyond the frame and explain how many different networks of people ultimately affect his life’s path. It became apparent that some pairings of images/text did not hold together well with the others, so I rewrote the text or removed the pair altogether. What remained were 12 pairs of images with text that illustrate the relationships in the life of one Aymara boy and how these relationships have shaped him into who he is today.

Using the photo essay to reflect on media practices

Example 1: The Looks of the 1980s

In this essay, Yuqian Yan and Wei Lin look back at the 1980s - a time of significant cultural and technological change in China. In their introduction, they reflect on the way photographs communicate to us across the decades (2022, p.323):

Photographs also look back on us, as happenings of the past and objects that survive time. They forcefully confront us and make us confront our own times through the presence of a time-space that laid the ground for who we are and how we live today. We look at the 1980s for its critical position at the historical junction of China’s economic and technological development; and the 1980s look back on us, from the photographs they reside in, calling attention to the time passed by and our very being-in-the-world in the current situation.

In the extract below, the essayists offer us a photo and brief commentary:

In 1987, China’s first Total Access Communication System (TACS) was launched in Guangdong, enabling wireless connections with Hong Kong and Macao. The first 100 sample cellular phones were released in Guangzhou that year, each cost 20,000 RMB, plus 6,000 RMB network fee, an astronomical figure for ordinary Chinese families. The woman in the photo is taking a boat to the city for business. The thick, black mobile phone she holds is an unmistakable sign of her family’s economic status, but the worn-down fan in front of her subtly indicates her frugality carried from the past.

The commentary seems a little too brief - it usefully contextualises the image but does not offer a reflection on the relationship between subject and observer across 'time-space' that was promised in the introduction.

Example 2: Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising: A Photo Essay

When it comes to linking mage and text, this essay may offer more. The author, Anne Cronin, (2013, p,356) writes:

The text and images below are in dialogue. Their juxtapositions aim to explore how my experience of researching urban space through the camera was a process, a process set out here as a form of narrative. My photographic practices came to be folded together with my understandings of how the industry researches and sells urban spaces. This is a reflection on method and on ways of seeing that is inevitably personal and situated. But it also speaks to the framing of urban experience as commercial with all the complexities and hesitations that this implies.

Here is an extract that combines image with text:

Setting off with my camera, I aim to document advertising in the outdoor spaces of Manchester: billboards alongside arterial roads, panels in pedestrian zones, “mega wraps” on scaffolding. I intend to plot out these spaces through photographs—this here; that there. I imagine that this will be a useful mapping of location and type of advertising structure that will complement the ethnographic data I have already gathered from media-owning companies.

I should be focusing on advertising. But as I walk, photograph, and map, I become aware that I am learning to see other spaces. The camera as technology of knowing has been much discussed, as have photographs’ temporal and spatial qualities. In her work on cities, Liggett (2003, p. xiv) remarks that photographs and text combine to produce “cultural spaces,” and the making of images bears witness not only to the city but to people’s role as producers of space. And Edensor (2005, p. 15) uses his camera to examine the “sensual immanence” of the experience of moving through urban spaces. Although I know the theories, I’m still surprised by my own practice and by what I see while I should be focusing on billboards. The practice of photographing these commercial, officially sanctioned structures and sites seems to license me to see other spaces.

Flicking through them later, these other photos seem to comment on my own, shifting ways of seeing. The photos seem to present a kind of research diary—unintended, yet detailed and suggestive—and to offer a methodological commentary on seeing, knowing, and researching with a camera...

Essay analysis

Let's look a little more closely at this essay to see how it is structured and also to explore how the researcher/essayist reflects on the image-making process and her own responses while also bringing in theory to help develop discussion.

The introduction

Image and text

The conclusion

This essay is just one example of a photo essay that reflects on media practices. It isn't perfect. For example, the text that sits below each image seldom refers to the specifics of the photograph e.g. point of view, lighting, composition, framing. Is this deliberate or an oversight?

Four things to think about when writing your own photo essay

What photos are you going to choose?

Are you going to choose photos that you have taken (so there will be a story about how you took the image) or will you choose photos from the work of others? Your choices will need to connect with the set assignment theme - what criteria will you use to make those choices?

How will you sequence your photos?

In the photo essay examples we have explored in this resource, the ordering of photos is important, especially where the text is minimal and there is a reliance on the photos to 'do the talking'. For your assignment, how will you sequence the photos so that they form a narrative, argument or something thematically coherent to say in support of the assignment?

What will you say in the image commentary?

As we have seen, the text that accompanies each image serves various purposes. For a photo essay that aims to reflect critically on media practices, think about including the following:

• Context - a brief account of the what, why, where, when and how of the photo
• Image specifics - are there particular properties of the image that you want to foreground as they strike you as especially significant?
• Your responses - what is your relationship with the photo and how does it speak to you? Importantly, how do those responses help you address your essay assignment theme?
• Theory - what have scholars and practitioners (perhaps mentioned in module readings) said about the theme that could help you develop your discussion of the image?

What style of writing is needed for critical reflection?

Critical reflective writing differs from ‘conventional’ essay writing in one important respect. In reflective writing, your own experience and responses are a source of evidence. In a sense, you are the object of enquiry. It is therefore perfectly appropriate to use first person 'I' when discussing your relationship with an image.

In other respects, a reflective essay is just like a conventional academic essay.

• It plugs discussion into key literature and follows academic conventions for in-text referencing and bibliographies.
• It uses formal academic English, avoiding casual vocabulary ( a lot of, sort of, terrific) and contractions (can’t , won’t), and prizes economy of expression.
• Errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling are not tolerated.
• It makes use of description sparingly and foregrounds analysis and argument supported by clear essay structure and focussed paragraphs.

References

Cronin, A.M., 2011. Researching urban space, reflecting on advertising: A photo essay. Space and Culture, 14(4), pp.356-366.

Crowder, J.W., 2013. Becoming Luis: A Photo Essay on Growing up in Bolivia. Visual Anthropology Review, 29(2), pp.107-122.

Sutherland, P., 2016. The Photo Essay. Visual Anthropology Review, 32(2), pp.115-121.

Yan, Y. and Lin, W., 2022. The looks of the 1980s. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 23(2), pp.323-335.