Assignment Five: Narrative

Introduction

I don’t know if I could have found a more interesting subject for this assignment.

When I started thinking some months ago about how to spend my 8-week my summer holiday, I knew I wanted to do something to extend my photographic practice.  I began looking around the internet for classes, most of which seemed to be rather expensive and not in the direction I would be travelling, toward my in-laws in Japan.  I found a few organizations offering internships with newspapers and magazines in several developing Asian nations, but it seemed fees were too high for unpaid work experience.  I then came upon Unite For Sight, a US-based NGO supporting eye clinics in several developing countries and offering volunteer opportunities to photography students.  Three of their network hospitals are in India, east of and very close to Dubai.

With a reference from my OCA tutor and other supporting documents, my application to the program was accepted and my plan set in motion:  to do this narrative assignment on some aspect of life at Kalinga Eye Hospital.   Besides meeting my own needs, I wanted to do work that would be useful to the hospital, but communication from India was sparse.  The NGO claimed the hospital staff was busy and would be able to discuss things with me once I arrived. 

Exercise 42: Rain

It seems rather unfair to have two exercises about rain and none about other types of weather or climatic conditions, especially when living in a place like Dubai.  I considered myself fortunate to run into the first rain exercise at a time of year when Dubai actually sees dark clouds and wet streets, but now it's midsummer and it's nothing but heat and haze likely lasting until about October.

Exercise 41: Juxtaposition

The brief for this exercise is to create a book cover using opposition to suggest conflict.  I really had no idea what to do so started browsing through fiction at Amazon.  I came across an interesting looking book that I haven't read, about a Japanese priest morally compromised by an affair with his mother-in-law. The blurb at Amazon didn't provide enough detail, so I went in search of a fuller summary, which you can read here.

Exercise 40: Symbols

This is a conceptual exercise that does not require the production of images.  We are asked to think of one symbol for each of the following concepts, with notes about how they might be used in photographs.  The purpose here, I believe, is to demonstrate how difficult it is to think of original ways of conveying such concepts as images.  Our visual thinking is as uninformed and cliched as our conceptual thinking.

Following are some ideas, along with a few photos scavenged from the web.

GROWTH

Exercise 39: Evidence of Action

The brief asks for a photograph "in which it can be seen that something has happened."  It is part of a discussion on illustration, the ability to tell a story in a single image, and the difficulties of conveying abstract ideas.

Exercise 38: A Narrative Picture Essay

I had the good fortune of having an interesting event fall into my lap. A group of cleaners visited my apartment building to wash away a year's worth of sand.  They do this in the most dramatic way possible, by rappelling down the face of the 200 meter, 30 story building with high pressure hoses.  There was little time to research or plan, simply to follow these guys and shoot. I spent the better part of the day with them, from their early morning set-up to late afternoon clean-up, shooting from on the roof and on the ground.

I took approximately 90 images, which on reflection seems little, but for the purpose of the assignment turned out to be adequate.  I think I didn't shoot more because once the men were hanging from ropes, there were few unique angles from which to shoot. One angle I didn't pursue was from an apartment balcony and that was simply because of timidity.  I don't know anyone living on that side of the building and didn't feel comfortable ringing a stranger's doorbell to ask if I could take photos from his balcony.