Photography is more meaningful when there is context

_ is a Nshville based photojournalsit whose work i've fund to be particularly meaningful. I've found Ray Di Peitro's photography to be quite meaningful. Pietro is a Nashville based photojournalist.

I think what captures my interest in his photography is the fact that his photos are not just random. Not being random here is not in the sense that he has a niche that he occupies. He does have a niche: journalism. But the primary reason why his work feels coherent and absorbable and not just random photos that a person is to see is because evrery collection of photos that he publishes is accompanied by stories that tell you more about what you see.

I've talked about this idea a bit in an earlier blog about changing the way I do photography. While I no longer stand by the approach I described in the essay or stuck to it even for a short while (the approach was for selecting a random photo I hve taken in the past and published it), i think that there is one thing in the essay that I did get right. And that is that context is necessary for full appreciation of a photo.

Having context around a photo—providing a statement that accompanies a photo—I think is the difference between a photo that is posted. A photo that is posted without context is basically a photo where the author says: "this is beautiful. you should see this." a photo with context, on the other hand is a photo that says "this photo is a point in time. and this is the story of that point in time." while the first is equally appreciable art, i think it is quite limited and has some of the issues that relate to the one i had earlier.

when a photo has no story behind it, that photo gains its credence and value from its inherent appearance. while this is worthwhile, this tends to work best when a person travels a lot and captures photos of beautiful things they see. this however, has limited value to it and many random photos that a person would take would not have enough quality to be appreciated when presented in this form. . this thus limits a person's work to photos that look good and prevent one from presenting works that might look less appreciable. i think this sort of approach to photography is also what forces the photography tropes of "waiting for the right subject," "following the light," etc. that is commonplace recommendation for photographers. this isn't entirely a bash of this approach of photography. but this approach to photography limits one to the either a few good photos of beautiful places and the photography cliches.

the other approach, which i consider to be more meaningful on the other hand involves having photography serve as a medium for storytelling. rather than taking a picture and telling the viewer "this is cool. you should see it" and ending it there, this approach involves being in moments, capturing those moments, and sharing the stories of those moments. this pretty much aligns with what a photojournalist does, which is being present atmoments and capturing them and telling the stories of those moments. but this can also carry over to indivudal photography instead. a random photo is made a lot more meaningful when the photographer tells a story behind those moments.

in fact, this applies too in photojournalism and we see it in di Peitro's work as well. not to be critical of his work, but many great photos that he has published are not the most wonderfully composed by the general standards of composition, but the context provided by the emotion in those photos and the meaninf provided in the accompanying stories make those photos a lot more worthy than any composition can provide worth to those photos.

i'm pretty surprised that i'm taking this thought pattern seriosly this late into my journey in photography. but i think it's worth sharing. i mean the reason for this is that a lot of my work is a lot less inspired in the way di pietro's work is. and he goes to where things happen and captures them, while i on the other hand just have a camera with me and see something and think that it looks cool and captures it, so there's more intent in piero's work by default than there is in mine, generally.

regardless, having stories accompanying photos make them so much more meaningful than having plain contextless photos of non-self-aweing moments.