Part Two - Narrative: Project One - Telling a story: Exercise - Linear storylines

The exercise asks us to compare Briony Campbell's The Dad Project with Eugene Smith's Country Doctor article published in LIFE magazine, both examples of photo essays telling a linear story from an insider's point of view. 

I found these two articles very different from several aspects.  First of all, Country Doctor seemed to me to be very matter-of-fact, yes you get a sense of struggle from the images, but it didn't move me in the same way that The Dad Project, a very personal account, did, which had me reaching for the Kleenex way before I'd got to the end. 

The structure of the stories are also different.  The course materials describe Country Doctor as a linear photo essay, but is it?  The story presented is a chronicle shot over 23 days, but each photo represents a discrete event.  The events themselves are linked by the presence of the doctor and the subject matter, but this is not a sequential story.  Each photograph could be viewed individually, and the order that the images are presented in  could be changed.  It is not a beginning, middle and end narrative.  In addition, the text that accompanies the Country Doctor essay is not essential.  It's useful and interesting, but the photographs also speak for themselves; you can figure out what is going on without needing the text.  And the essay is essentially an account of the work of one individual and his relationship with a multitude of people that come and go in his life.  The photographs represent moments in his life (and the lives of his subjects), but there is no continuation of story.

In contrast, The Dad Project, is firstly a very linear account: it has an introduction, starting point, middle and end.  It is also an essay, illustrated by photographs, which support and increase the sense of emotion.  The essay, written in the first person, describes the relationship between two people, Campbell and her father, towards the end of her father's life.  It documents his illness, her way of dealing with it and coming to terms with the loss of her dad.  And in contrast to the Country Doctor, you could read the narrative without the photographs, and still get a deep insight into Campbell's emotions, but with the images somehow she really captures the emotions she feels.  She photographs the "unphotographable": love, pain, grief, upholding values, suffering, moments of optimism and death itself.

In terms of actual photography, the two bodies of work are obviously very different.  Country Doctor is captured in black and white with clear focus on elements e.g. angle of shooting, structure of composition, an attempt to make the doctor look heroic in the photographs.  Campbell's images are gentle and considered, colour, and truthful.

Campbell writes that the story is of an "ending without an ending": I think that by this she means three things:

1. Reference to the concept of life after death
2. The fact that when you lose someone close you never stop grieving, more that you learn to live with it and to give it space in your life, but it is a never ending process.  So I think she is referring to the first ending as the ending of her father's suffering, but that it has no ending because she will always love him and miss him
3. Through her project, she has kept his memory alive and communicated it to a wide audience.  Thus the story continues.

References:

• Smith, W. E. (1948) Country Doctor. LIFE [online] available from http://life.time.com/history/life-classic-eugene-smiths-country-doctor/#1 [accessed 5 October 2014]
• Campbell, B. (2011) The Dad Project available [online] available from http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf [accessed 5 October 2014]