Does A Photograph Have to Tell A Story?

Since time immemorial philosophers and artists have believed that art must express a degree of depth, that it must communicate some sort of wisdom. In the 1700’s the philosopher Sir Joshua Reynolds stated that in order to be great art, a painting must tell a major story. In order to fully appreciate that art, viewers had to decipher or “read” this story from the image and understand its meaning.

This ethos has continued to permeate modern photographic philosophy, particularly in the nude photographic genre. It is not enough that the camera captures reality – in order for a photograph to be deemed successful photographic art, there must be an element of a story, something “more” to draw the viewer in. As a random example, dip into any image in the magnificent Fetish Photo Anthology 5, and you’ll find a story. Each image has a different tale to tell, even the (supposedly simple) portraits.

It is worth pointing out that story interpretation is subjective. Each viewer will visualise and extrapolate the individual photographs differently, according to what he thinks he can see. What matters is that the viewer is drawn to analyse the image, to seek a message from within the photograph. That’s what makes the photograph powerful. Successful art has the ability to generate emotion. The photographer’s job is not necessarily to convey his original intention of the image to the viewer, but rather to stimulate the imagination of the viewer to feel some sort of intellectual or emotional reaction, depending on each person’s own individual interpretation.

For example, when looking at a nude female photograph, women will usually look for a different message than men. I tend to look for the overall message of the photograph first, examine the emotion that it generates in me. I’m not really looking for the erotic thrill of seeing a naked chick, I don’t look at details, I’m searching for the esoteric, the spiritual message within (assuming there is one.) A man might see that too of course, but you’ll appreciate that a man is more likely to experience an erotic reaction to a photograph of a nude, than a heterosexual woman would.



Rich thinks this is all codswallop. He says he doesn’t do stories. As you all know he favours fine-art figure studies, which he says, tell no story. He reckons that photographs don’t have to tell a story to be classified as artistic. It is enough to capture what is really there. A story is nice, but not always required. He says his own photographic motivations are to bring out the best in a woman, “to make her look the best she can possibly be.” Thus, he says, no story is present in a figure study, and nor is any “inner message” necessary for this genre to be classified as artistic.

I think he is wrong. IMO a figure study does tell a story, but it is a tale of light and shadow and mood, a story of an ordinary woman being elevated to something more ethereal. She looks perfect, unattainable, almost unearthly. The art nude photograph reflects not just the ordinary woman within, it combines the physical and the celestial, reality and fiction, through the technique of light, shadow, composition and posing. The ordinary woman becomes “something greater” than what she usually feels, she becomes just a little bit like a goddess. On looking at her finished images, a model will often say, “Wow! I never knew I could look like that. I’m really beautiful.” And THAT itself is the story. If the only depth and wisdom that art-nude photography achieves is to make a woman realise her inner beauty, then that’s enough story for me.

So, unlike Rich, I believe that successful photographs do tell a story, and that’s why we crave looking at them so much. Just as a child is addicted to listening to stories, we grownups also continue to resemble the children we once were. We grow older but we do not change. We always crave the next story, and the next. They are as essential to our survival as food. Whether these stories are via the written word, through illustrations or through photographs, it doesn’t matter, just as long as we are fed.

The photographer is therefore so much more than someone who merely captures and records reality. He is our master storyteller, the creator of magic, and the artist who has power over our imagination.