Back in day, a single photograph could rise to fame and fortune all by itself. Steve McCurry’s Afghan girl, Eisenstaedt’s “VJ Day in Times Square,” Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima flag raising—all these and many more stand supreme and alone in time and memory.
Those days, though, are mostly over. We all see far too many images—both still and moving—for any one of them to stand out so brilliantly. And perhaps those images we hold as iconic never really stood by themselves as much as we think anyway.
To comprehend the VJ day couple kissing in Times Square as special, the viewer would have to know what VJ day meant, would have to know about the years of war that preceeded it. Otherwise, there’s nothing extra remarkable about it. Everything needs context.
But context and story can be conjured for just about any subject matter with a series of images carefully arranged with the eye of a film editor. A wide shot in an REI catalog showing the hard weather, followed by a close up to show determination. A view of the Dharavi area of Mumbai contrasted with portraits of people working and creating there.
It doesn’t always take much, but the context has to be there rather than assumed.
Probably a lot of photographers think this way subconsciously, the result of exposure to so much media growing up.
But however this shift away from the single image arrived, we’re all film editors and cinematographers now—even when working with still images.
