Art Photography Now by Susan Bright

To help me develop a greater understanding on constructed narratives I looked at 'Art Photography' Now by Susan Bright as she has a whole section dedicated to narrative in the book.

To try and follow the threads of influence that feed into contemporary art photography is an almost impossible task. It is too wide and varied, contradictory and elusive.

Bright tells us how 'the term 'narrative' suggests a story and therefore movement. A story needs to progress in order to be told'. This way of thinking seems to put singular still image, however 'staged' photos express stories as they are 'packed full of multi-layered information'. As they a multi-layered it requires a lot of time from the viewer because they need to dissect the layers.

She tells us how the language and cultural understanding is the same as film and we way of interpreting it is pretty much the same.

'Narrative is crucial to photography so is deviousness, and contemporary artists have realised this strategy to tell their stories.' Images often relate to wider social issues.

How we can digitally manipulate images so well, viewers often get confused bit it just makes them study and think about the image further.

The book featured the work of Gregory Crewdson. He talks about how he loves the idea of telling a story without any limitations. There is a quote of his and I found it really interesting. I wasn't really a fan of his work before as I thought that it looked too staged, but after I read this I had a new understanding of why he stages them so precisely.

'My first impulse is to make the most beautiful picture I can. But then I'm always interested in this idea of a kind of undercurrent in the work. I think of that completely in psychology terms. The perfect façade and whats beneath the surface of that façade. I'm very interested in the uncanny and a way of looking to find something mysterious or terrible within everyday life. For better or worse, a lot of my newer pictures seem less dark. The uncanniness is less explicit and more poetic in feel,'

I also looked at Hannah Starkey again. She talks about how carefully constructing her photographs she can express how she views the world around her to others. By collaborating with people (the models) she can also express how other people view the work.