The Photo Essay Was Not the Magazine

When I started taking photography seriously, I was taking single photos. At most, I’d go back to the same place over and over again (e.g. Aberdeen beach) but each visit would be separate from the previous ones. It worked for me because I was interested in making pretty pictures, and they don’t need to tell a story. After a while, it started to feel like they were falling short of something. A sandy beach by itself is nothing. Add a wreck, then a man with a dog, and it starts to say something. A sequence starts to build up and it acquires meaning that no single image can. Which made me wonder, eventually, where the idea came from. Who decided that a story could be told in photographs, in a deliberate order, with an edit? Eventually, I developed an interest in photo essays and storytelling. Wreck on the beach When you think photo essay, you think Life Magazine. If you’re French, you think Paris Match. You think WWII reportage. You think Viet-Nam reporting. Or even Gulf War embedded…