Visual Narratives
Ena Baccari
A visual narrative (also visual storytelling)[1] is a story told primarily through the use of visual media. This can be images in the mind, digital, and traditional media.[2] The story may be told using still photography, illustration, or video, and can be enhanced with graphics, music, voice and other audio.
The term "visual narrative" has been used to describe several genres of visual storytelling, from news and information (photojournalism, the photo essay, the documentary film) to entertainment (art, movies, television, comic books, the graphic novel). In short, any kind of a story, told visually, is a visual narrative.
It can also be used as a form of visual communication as people naturally use stories to understand the world and express their stories. In some circumstances, visual narrative can be misleading, misinformative, or disinformative.[2]
The visual narrative has also been of interest to the academic community as scholars, thinkers and educators have sought to understand the impact and power of image and narrative in individuals and societies. The corresponding discipline is called visual narratology.[3]
Dana Clancy curated her MFA program at CFA to visual narrative where they will be exploring narrative art in both visual and written forms. She allowed her students to explore different types of media and genres.[4]
Traditional storytelling methods have become dull. The best way to get creative with storytelling is to embrace spontaneity and incorporate elements of fun and spontaneity. Here are some steps in order to keep your audience engaged:
Brands have the ability to tell visual stories by incorporating dynamic visuals and other content in their marketing strategy. Marketing design can play a large role in solidifying the messages brands are pushing forward to their audience. The best visual expression of a brand aligns with the brands' identity.
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Visual narratives are everywhere. They not only reflect but shape our daily experiences, our thoughts, and even our values. They can present information, demand our attention, and construct our realities.
The choices made by a photographer about elements in front of the subject. Foreground can further the illusion of depth, and it can also flatten the perspective. It can call attention to something of interest.
Your discussions bring forth responses about what the photograph shows, how it works visually, and how it tells its story. Next, you will start broadening this discussion into brainstorming a definition of visual narratives.
Visual narratives can encompass individual images, series of images, and sequences of images created with the intent to tell a story. Visual narrative formats include drawing, painting, illustration, still photography, film, collage, and performance art. The intent to tell a story is what sets visual narratives apart from works (including photographs) created using visual language purely to evoke imagination or engagement. [1]
Now that we have a shared definition, we can now think more about the purposes of visual narratives, especially photographic visual narratives. Four broad purposes for photographic narratives are outlined below, which are adapted from the work of Marvin Heiferman [2].
In order to arrive at a shared sense of the purposes of photographic visual narratives, brainstorm why artists create visual narratives. Use the list below to get you started. What would you add or expand on?
Now, we will look at photographs from the Getty collection and analyze their purposes and how they work as storytelling devices. If possible, display all five images at once, and read their captions, to situate the photographs in time and place. Using the list of purposes of visual narratives, match each photograph to a purpose and support your choices with evidence from the work.
Central Park, North of the Obelisk, Behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 1993, Joel Sternfeld, chromogenic print. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Gift of Nancy and Bruce Berman. Joel Sternfeld, Courtesy of Luhring Augustine, New York
Now that you have a definition and an understanding of some of the purposes of photographic narratives, you can find or create your own visual narrative. Choose two of the following prompts, and find or create multiple examples of each:
Your ideas come to life through your art. And as a storyteller, you've always been able to express yourself through written and visual mediums. At Lesley, you'll harness those skills to refine your voice and develop a distinct visual language.
Kate Castelli is an artist living and working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She earned her BFA in Illustration and Art History at the Art Institute of Boston, and her MFA in printmaking and book arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her studio practice exists at the intersection of books, works on paper, and collections that explore poetic and formal juxtapositions in order to connect what cannot be connected. She is rarely without a sketchbook, frequently haunts used bookstores, and is hopelessly addicted to coffee.
Diana Arcadipone is a maker who studied painting and printmaking at Western Michigan University, where she earned a BFA degree with honors. She earned an MFA degree from Ohio University with honors. She has been awarded artist residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California as well as The Banff Centre and the Leighton Artists' Colony in Alberta, Canada.
She has exhibited work internationally and her work is held in many public and private collections in the US and Europe. She travels and researches art making techniques globally and lives in Maine. Diana Arcadipone creates artworks on and of paper.
Her passion for making art with natural materials, and mixed media emerged from an early devotion to craft techniques such as papermaking, book arts, basketry, embroidery and textiles. Arcadipone's work is informed by primitive art, folk art, traveling, and the natural environment; it is the intersection of these influences that defines her work.
Tom Barrett is an adjunct illustration faculty here at the College of Art and Design. His academic expertise includes transparent media, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Outside of class, many students have found Tom walking his dog around the Boston Commons. They have also seen her as a demonstration subject in class.
Louisa Bertman is an award winning illustrator, animator, filmmaker and visual journalist. Through visual narratives including illustration, gifs and animated shorts, in conjunction with technology and social media, her work brings voice and attention to social and political awareness, social justice and social innovation. She has participated in recent exhibitions at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York, Museum of the City of New York, Society of Illustrators in New York, Boston City Hall Plaza and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others.
Diane Bigda is an adjunct faculty teaching in the Illustration department, focusing on drawing, transparent media, surface design, and printmaking. Diane also teaches Natural History Drawing in her home. She is an alumna of the Art Institute of Boston.
David Bondar is an illustration faculty member whose focus has been on Anatomy and Figure Drawing and Painting Techniques in Illustration. He holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. In addition to his teaching he is also a Doctor of Optometry and has held a private practice for ten years.
Tim Finn is an Adjunct Animation Faculty and has been teaching at the College of Art and Design since 2005. He has recently taught Character Animation, Alternative Comix, Drawing for Animation, and History of Animation. Finn earned his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and his MAT at School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He owns a comic book store, Hub Comics, 1.3 miles from the College of Art and Design. His teaching style balances personal expression with industry expectations. He provides copious examples from films, props, handouts, and anecdotes in class.
Leah Hayes is an illustrator, writer, producer, and graphic novelist. She has published several graphic novels with Fantagraphics Books, including Funeral of the Heart, Holy Moly, and her latest work, Not Funny Ha-Ha, which was voted one of the "Top Ten Graphic Novels Of The Year" by Forbes as well as being a New York Times Best-Seller. Hayes's editorial illustrations make regular appearances in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and many other publications. She is working on her newest graphic novel, and has most recently begun a live-action adaptation of Not Funny Ha-Ha for network television.
After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Hayes returned as adjunct faculty in the Illustration Department, staying on for nearly ten years. After Parsons, she then went on to teach Illustration at Mass College of Art, Endicott College, and is now faculty at Lesley University. Hayes has also taught Graphic Novel Writing, Animation, Figure Drawing, and Typography at various times.
Diane's tufted portraits celebrate the lives of local rescue animals and adoption narratives. By mixing disparate motifs and media, her art aims to re-frame the use and meaning of animal bodies in our culture. Trained as a figure painter, Diane's human subjects' textile rich environments were featured in her early paintings.
As she copied vintage scarves and pastoral scenes on Toile de Jouy and Peacock chenille bedspreads, Diane became interested in the use of both animal imagery as well as animal print patterns. She studied how luxury brands used animals to symbolize pedigree, luxury and colonial exoticism. Her goal is to update the idea of the bucolic textile or animal pelt rug into something both joyful and critical.
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