| Photography Forum: Philosophy Of Photography Forum: |
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Q. Collections, Series and Sequences
Asked by Alan Gibson
(K=2734) on 4/12/1999
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This is related to the 'Aesthetics of the single still frame' thread. I have described my Boat Race photos as a 'series', but I think 'collection' would be a better word. The distinction, as I see it, is that a 'collection' is a group of related photographs, with no particular ordering implied. A 'series' (or 'sequence') would be a collection with a particular order. There is some kind of ordering implied by the images themselves, and when they are viewed out of order, it looks somehow 'wrong'.
Duane Michals creates sequences. John Berger and Jean Mohr also create sequences (see especially If each time... in Another way of telling), where the factors that impose the order, the connections, are far more subtle. The Michals photos are like still frames from a scene in a move, whereas each Berger/Mohr photo is closer to an entire scene in the whole movie. A photo in a Michals sequence doesn't really stand up on its own, and needs the other photos. The images in If each time... weren't created for the sequence; the sequence was constructed (I think) from pre-existing photos.
I don't think I've ever created a Michals type of sequence. I've attempted the Berger/Mohr type, without any real success.
What is your take on this? Do you create deliberate sequences? Or sequences from pre-existing photos? Are there other type of sequence?
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Patricia Lee
(K=336) - Comment Date 4/12/1999
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I don't deliberately create sequences, though I find that a "collection" tends to suggest sequence. Perhaps it's done subconsciously.
Other types of sequences rather than time-based ones do exist. For example, when I did final projects for my intro to color photography and my color printing classes, I just went out and shot a lot of nature scenes, not consciously going for any particular goal. In both cases, as I began looking through my yields, I found that I had taken many pictures that seemed to segue naturally based on shape, colors, placement, and intensity. The pictures were not taken in chronological order. When I placed them in what seemed like a natural visual order, they were no longer "just went out and shot" individual images.
To me, this is one of the great pleasures of photography: seeing my own subconscious visual processes manifested.
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kirk kennelly
(K=45) - Comment Date 4/12/1999
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The sequence plays with our perceptions of time and what comes next...can introduce the unexpected, thus something interesting and new comes out to play. I think I will try some Michaels type sequences. You're right when you say that his images depend on sequnce and are essentially bereft of content as individual photos. there are exceptions like the couple in an office beign made progressively naked and more jungle introduced...each of the middle two pictures individually can lead one to infer the matrix of content.
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tom meyer
(K=2752) - Comment Date 4/13/1999
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I think Collections are thematic, Sequences are narrative and Series are bound by whatever else you want, graphic similarities, subject matter, chronology, etc.
Art is collected according to one's personal taste, an imposed theme of the collectors penchant.
Duane Michaels photographed in sequence, with captions, to narrate a story.
"The Red Couch" was a series of photos unified only by the presence of the same subject in each.
Oversimplified, perhaps, but in the ballpark...t
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