THE SERIES....
by Sey Rosen
The SERIES is the blurring of the lines between Photo-Reportage, Documentary and Candid Street Photography. The Series tells a story. It is a sequence of images depicting any of the following, and more: an event, a place, a travelogue, a description of an Ethnic group and/or its traditions, idiosyncrasies of people, a conversation, simple daily life, religious festivals, etc., The main difference between the 3 genres is the spontaneous candidness of the street images without words. The street photographer uses their instincts to make their images which are usually unplanned, spur of the moment decisions. Both photo-reportage and documentary photography are more planned, often staged or set-up photo-ops, such as at political rallies, socio-economic conditions, demonstrations, celebrities, or weddings and the images are used to illustrate an article, whilst the candid street images are the instinctive, spontaneous, one-off, unrepeatable, never again fleeting-moment short picture stories.
At times the street photographer may get lucky and have the time to candidly work an evolving scene (such as my example below, they were totally unaware of me as I moved slowly around them for about 5 mins.) and thus produce this story with a number of images. Other times the series may be built on images taken at different times and/or locales, but based on the same common theme that links the images into a story. Like writers who build their stories with beginnings, middles and ends, so should a photo-story be made. The street photographer must hone their awareness and anticipation for possible developing short picture stories.
The series needs to be visually cohesive. A mix of monochrome and colour images breaks the visual flow and thus the story falls apart. Similarly, the tonal values and format/size should be close from image to image as this too affects the visual flow of the story. A series is not a collection of random shots with little or no connection. In the series, the story has to be clear to the viewer what the photographer is feeling, saying and expressing.
Another important thing to remember is that each image in the series should be a strong one, able to be a stand-alone. A collection of mediocre images will never create a strong, story-telling series. To prepare the series each image has to be carefully tweaked and then the selection and order of the images carefully decided. Again just as in writing the work needs careful editing, tweaking and correction to enable the strong story-telling to flow. It can be a simple story or it can be a strong message-carrying story, but it must always be a flowing, visually interesting story.
I believe that a successful candid series needs a very short caption, if any at all. Perhaps just naming the locale and/or the event or festival. The minute the series is introduced by a long written explanation it becomes a photo-reportage or documentary, even though it's meant to be candid. The whole thing about the candid street is the photographer attempting to immediately record and clearly transmit their feelings, heart and soul, of that split second to their viewers. Succeeding in that, they have successfully told the story visually whether it's a single shot or a series with a more detailed story. For us, the images are our words.
