Photographs Tell 1,000 Stories

Gregory Crewdson’s arresting photograph is nearly five feet tall and eight feet across, large enough for a viewer to get completely engrossed in the details. The scene at its most basic is simple enough: A man standing by a river bank, shirtless; a makeshift shack behind him, lit from the inside; beyond a stand of trees, a row of houses. 

But the mood, the lighting, and the details all set the wheels for any number of stories in motion. Does the man live in the shack? Or does someone else? Or does anyone? Do the people who live in the houses know someone’s down there by the river, or is the man truly isolated? And what has brought him to the water’s edge at night? Is he lost in contemplation? Is he waiting for someone else to arrive? Or, perhaps, is he watching intently as something’s happening, maybe on the opposite shore, maybe in the water itself? Maybe this is actually a scene of ferocious action, only just out of frame.

The narrative possibilities created by the keen senses of wonder and foreboding, of awe and suspense, in Crewdson’s image link it with the rest of the photographs in ​“Photographic Storytelling: Photographs from the Permanent Collection,” running now on the fourth floor of the Yale University Art Gallery through June 2. The show focuses on photographers who, since the medium’s inception, have used their photographs explicitly to tell stories. 

“Narrative photographs set up open-ended scenarios in which gestures, details, and staging combine to create dramatic events in a single scene,” an accompanying note explains. The exhibition shows how the visual language for telling these stories has evolved along with the capabilities of photography — and the continual development of cinema — into a rich tradition in which the right image can pack the weight of a short story, feature film, or novel into a single frame.

Some of the earliest narrative photographs came from the Pictorialists, who ​“drew on the aesthetics of painting to handcraft subjectively expressive images before adopting a more straightforward, modern approach that predominated for the next 60 years.” A group called the Photo-Secessionists was active ​“at a time when photography was not yet considered a serious art form.” 

Photographer Edward Steichen was also a painter, and in his 1903 self-portrait he ​“chose to represent himself with palette and brush, not the seemingly more technical tool of the camera.” Photographs like this one ​“advanced the Photo-Secessionist cause.” It’s refreshing to remember that, when it was a new technology, photography had to fight for legitimacy as an art form, just as AI art does now. Steichen’s ability with the camera likely began with his ability as a painter; his eye, already refined by working with paint, almost certainly helped him take better photographs, helping him in a debate about photography as art that is now entirely settled.

A few landmarks are represented among the many narrative photographs in the show. In the realm of narrative photography, Cindy Sherman is now a giant, and in Untitled Film Still #84, from 1978, it’s easy to see why. For this series of images, an accompanying note explains, ​“Sherman put on guises and photographed herself in cinematic settings. She deliberately selected props to mimic scenes from film stills used to promote B movies of the mid-20th century. Images in the series immediately became flashpoints for conversations about feminism, postmodernism, and representation, and they remain Sherman’s best-known works.”

As hip as Sherman’s image was in 1978, the viewer now might be hit by its staying power. The ideas in postmodernism are now pretty thoroughly digested, while the conversations about feminism and representation have changed a lot since Sherman took her photographs. Untitled Film Still #84 is still as relevant to those debates as ever, with the passage of time now highlighting what has changed and what has stayed the same. 

Its power, however, comes from its immediacy — the groceries spilling from the broken bag, the complicated expression on Sherman’s face. Is she address someone — her domestic partner, perhaps? — out of frame? The photograph implies a confrontation is coming, and it will involve how much Sherman’s character is being asked to do, how little she’s given to do it, and the tension involved in the frustration of struggling to meet unrealistic expectations.

Crewdson, who follows Sherman chronologically, shows how photography has continued to become more cinematic, but in some ways also staying out ahead of movies in its ability to pack so much mood and meaning into a single image, without the aid of motion, dialogue, or music. If anything, the show suggests, the most recent narrative photographers have only continued to push the form forward. Chinese photographer Wang Qingsong’s piece in the show hearkens back to the scrolls of traditional Chinese illustration, but is also a tour de force of shifting scenes and developing meaning as it strings scenes together, a small movie in and of itself.

But many of the most recent photographs are exercises in detail and subtlety that reflect the history of the medium and speak to today. As I Wait, by Merik Goma — a photographer based in New Haven and a NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program alum — manages to feel like an awe-inspiring capture of street photography even when we learn that the images are meticulously crafted in a studio. It makes sense: the lighting, the composition, are just too perfect to be accidental. But perhaps because it’s a photograph, and not a painting, the sense of freezing a moment in time is still quite present, and it lets us ponder the questions that the details in the image pose. 

What is the subject waiting for? The image implies the pause is happening on multiple levels. She’s waiting for someone to arrive, perhaps, and the disarray of the sandwiches in the box suggest that when this person shows up, the encounter will not be pretty. On a broader level, however, the woman’s face carries the implication that she’s waiting for bigger things, too. For her circumstances to improve, for her life to change. In that sense, Merik’s choice of medium is especially poignant. If this were a novel, or movie, we would see what happens next. The woman would almost certainly take some action. But in this photograph, she’s stuck. No matter what she wants, what her hopes and dreams are, she will be waiting forever.

“Photographic Storytelling: Photographs from the Permanent Collection” runs at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., through June 2. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.