Pro Photo Tips by Brooks Jensen
Trilogies
The history and legacy of fine art photography teaches us — practically pushes us — to think, capture, and produce images that are individual expressions of our creative vision. In fact, ask most photographers what they strive to produce as their artwork and they will describe a single, stand-alone print with exquisite composition that captures a unique and captivating moment. Not a bad goal and one we all strive to achieve. That may not be, however, the only way to think about and create photographic art. Indeed, if pressed, that's not what most of us actually do.
When we are out with our cameras searching for a photographable scene, the most common series of events is that each time we find a place, a subject, an illumination that moves us, we make many image captures or shoot multiple negatives — all in search of "the best," whatever that may be. After we load the images up to our computer from the camera or process the film into contact prints for review, the next step in the long process to finished artwork is a sometimes lengthy assessment of all the images we collected. We search for the magic one image that deserves special treatment, possibly even matting, framing, and hanging above the fireplace as our most successful image. But if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it possible that we've selected for finishing an image that viewers might not find as captivating as we do? Said another way, do you want your audience to judge your image or your experience, your image or its content, your craft or your vision? What if we were to go back to that collection of images you gathered in the field — is there only one image that is best? Does that mean that all the other images are rejected because they are somehow inferior?
Instead of a search for the one image with the largest "wow factor," what if we looked for a collection of images that each add to an accumulating experience? We could combine, for example, three images into a "trilogy," all printed on one sheet of paper, matted and framed for display. Or perhaps we could select half a dozen images and produce a handmade artist book, or perhaps a short PDF that tells a story of your experience. When Alfred Stieglitz displayed photographs in his art gallery alongside paintings in frames, he set in motion a way of thinking about photography that has limited photographers in their thinking ever since. If creativity is "thinking outside the box," perhaps there is no better analogy that to recognize the picture frame as a box that constrains how we define our artwork.
Here are a few examples of "Trilogies" that present three images together as a unit. I've been playing with this idea now for years and have observed a most interesting phenomenon. Viewers seem to be compulsively drawn to the challenge of interpreting the connections they imagine in the interstices between the images. Show three images together and it promotes an impulse to see them as a unit, as a group, as a statement, rather than as a peak moment. Instead of creating a "wow" moment of response, a Trilogy often leads to a deeper connection where the viewer mentally supplies the connections between the images. Interaction with trilogy turns the attention to the artist's emotional intent rather than on the craft of photography. Viewers are encourage to think about what the images have in common rather than how a single image measures up to the ideal.
