SFS: Engagement

A story in a single Frame has one objective; you get the point straight away.

This moment was picture perfect as visual narratives go:

Four people

Two people, know each other - they were engaged with each other. On closer examination, the man on the left is on his phone, however, the woman’s body language is engaged in his direction.

The woman in the middle is on her phone facing away. The person on the right, let’s assume for the sake of this conversation was happy just to sit and be still, while checking his phone. His head is pointing down so he must be looking at something.

What’s going on here?

Four people all engaged in something - I couldn’t help but feel they weren’t engaged in themselves.

Forget about any possibility of any kind of engagement with each other.

That wasn’t happening.

I have used the word engagement several times.

Our phones have now become the access point for digital engagement.

This form of expression and connection is now the matrix of communication, connection and false intimacy.

If you look at this image you can see physical proximity but zero intimacy. The two on the left represent potential, nothing more.

All this is just a subjective observation as I attempt to read into this visual narrative,

Photography takes a split second moment out of the flow of time and attempts to immortalise a moment forever. A moment with context, narrative and meaning.

The meaning will be subjective; the subject in the Frame, the photographer behind the camera and you the viewer.

If you don’t stop to look, see, feel and ponder this moment in the Frame, the visual narrative falls short and perhaps fails.

I am realising just how complex a single Frame story can be.

To be continued

Thanks for reading