Sequencing Workshop

For this sequencing workshop, we was introduced into three different projects, ‘Pictures from home’ by Larry Sultan (1992), ‘Carnival Strippers’ by Susan Meiselas (1972) and ‘NIAGARA’ (2006) by Alec Soth. All of the work could be seen as falling within the documentary realm of photography, although the contexts differed the followed a similar documentary approach.

I looked further into Susan Meiselas’ ‘Carnival Strippers’ (1972), the aim of the workshop was to interrogate the pictures within the project, narrow them down, and sequence them with a narrative that seemed to make the images flow from beginning to end, with minimal context regarding the project.

To begin the sequencing, the images were placed into three groups of Yes, no and maybe in order to determine which pictures needed to be kept, removed and further reviewed. This allowed the images to be narrowed down whilst thinking about the narrative which will pull the chosen images together.

The workshop was very beneficial as it gave me an insight into the way that photographers will create an edit of their images and experiment with the sequence and selection of images many times before the final book is produced. It was also very interesting to observe the various sequences that were made by other groups, as not everyone had the same images selected or in the same order, and different reasons why they had picked particular images. Finally, it was also fascinating to see the original sequence chosen by the photographer to compare the similarities and differences. Overall it was very beneficial to learn about the processes artists go through to create a photobook from their project.