The Week in Review – #2

As we conversed with photographers this past week, we found people who were excited to have a venue to share their stories but some who were also stumped as to what story to tell. While we are very pleased with the caliber of the stories collected here thus far, we would like to emphasize that an important part of our mission is for Rear Curtain to be a place to learn the art of storytelling and to share as we are all doing so. Sometimes the ideas for stories will serendipitously appear or perhaps stories that you had not intended to tell become important to share and we only know this once we begin to talk about them.

Take for example the opening chapters of this story by photographer and author of the eBook Close to Home, Stuart Sipahigil. He set out to tell one story and found a completely different one. Or this story by award-winning photographer and author of several books, Harold Davis. When we first approached Harold about sharing the story of Katie Rose, it was with the idea of it being a Craft post but the story is so powerful and moving, it has resonated just for the message itself. Originally Harold wanted to document Katie Rose’s progress for his family but the story is now a published book intended to help siblings and others in the family when a preemie is born. Don’t underestimate the value of the stories you can tell and we hope you will consider Rear Curtain as a place for you to share them.

This week we found a few interesting stories we shared over on Twitter. David Gardner’s New American Nomads is the beginnings of a longer-term project that is a “modern depiction of retirement in the United States”. Master storyteller Larry Towell has a multi-media story entitled “Hard Choices“, a story about Americans 60 and older who don’t have enough to eat. These are important themes to explore and we have a duty to tell the stories, if not for our parents and grandparents but for our children and grandchildren.

There are ways to tell stories more light-heartedly like this one celebrating Mexican migrants who are working very hard to support their families. It also demonstrates a more complex approach to story-telling, one that requires the photographer to be more of a participant than just an observer in the stories they tell.

And thanks to one of our contributors Ed Brydon for this link on Black Star Rising on “The Art of Visual Storytelling“. There is great advice here on the importance of preparation which is a topic we will share more about in the coming weeks. A special thank you as well to Craig Ferguson for the shout out on his blog. If we are lucky, we just might see a story or two from him!

Before we close, we need to send kudos to our very own Matthew Connors for the image for today’s post (and last week’s as well). There’s a lot of work that goes into Rear Curtain each and every day and once in a while, we need to recognize people in our own family for their contribution. Thanks Matt!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. We hope you go out and experience life and come back and share it with us.