Part 5 – Illustration and Narrative – Putting the subject first

The introduction to the ‘Illustration and Narrative’ section of the course aims first of all to establish and reinforce what illustration and narrative mean, and how the end result will differ from everything that I have learned so far on the course, in as much as with an illustrative or narrative image, the graphic content of the photograph (composition, lighting etc) is less important than the subject matter.

The first task of Part 5 was to find two contrasting images demonstrating polar opposites in terms of subject and graphic content; one should be of a simple, almost mundane subject, but well composed, well lit, and visually appealing. The other should be eyecatching in terms of content but perhaps lacking in its execution and design quality.

For the first image, where ‘art’ is more important than subject matter, I tried to find an aesthetically pleasing image of a fairly mundane subject – a cup of tea.

'November 7, 2011' by Flood Gondekowa (used with kind permission)

This image caught my eye immediately as the design elements applied – lighting, composition, colour, graphical elements – all turn what would otherwise be a very ordinary picture into one that is visually pleasing.

Now contrast this with an image where the subject is all-important and the ‘form’ of the photograph less so. Images from news stories and photojournalism are often a good example of this approach, so I looked for something suitable to illustrate this point.

Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement clash with New York Police Department officers after being removed from Zuccotti Park in New York, November 15, 2011 - photo by Lucas Johnson / Reuters.

The eviction of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters from New York’s Zuccotti Park where they had set up a tent city provided a lot of emotive images. I picked this one in particular because it has a tremendous sense of narrative despite the fact that in design and ‘art’ terms it is flawed to a certain extent. If you were to be critical of the ‘form’ of the image, you could argue that large portions are blurred and unclear and that details are difficult to make out, but all of this pales into insignificance compared to the story that is being told by the image; the main perpetrator, the female protester, is in fairly sharp focus and the blurring around her serves to emphasise the struggle. This makes for a very powerful image in my opinion.