EXPERIMENT III

PROPOSAL

Experiment three draws inspiration for a New Yorker article that looks at writing short stories from collections of photographs. The author describes her transition from using notebooks to photographs to remember small details in her day-to-day life. She uses these tidbits to craft short stories, some of which have been published in the New Yorker. To emulate her writing process, I will look back at some of the photographs in my photoblog, and try to shape stories around the images. Her works are largely nonfiction, extensions of her personal experiences traveling. My short stories will follow a similar trend, in magnifying on the details and emotions I had while taking the photographs and in the moment, as I currently view the image. The third experiment will incorporate several photographs to create a short story cycle.

GENRE ANALYSIS

Short story cycles represents collection of written works that can be read as independent yet contain thematic elements that tie the individual pieces together. In Mann’s 1989 analysis of the “short story cycle,” the idea considered central to the genre, the “essential characteristic of the short story cycle…[is] self-sufficiency and independence” (15). Mann defines these qualities as the reader’s ability to read the story as an individual, and at the same time, draw conclusions across stories. The latter component relies on the inclusion of several unifying elements, which include themes, typically “isolation or fragmentation” (7) single settings, collection titles, and the table of contents (Mann 1989).

The short stories will be deconstructed from images of characters or settings in accordance to the choices made in “A Thousand Words: Writing From Photographs,” by Casey N. Cep in The New Yorker. Cep writes short stories from the photographs she takes as a method to remember small details in her day to to day life. She pieces together stories from various details, often studying photographs “like an endless series of prompts...half-formed ideas to which I hope to return” (Cep 2017).

Model #1

My first model for experiment three is Cep’s New Yorker article. I look to her work and its description of photographs for inspiration. While I have practiced writing about photographs, I am yet to try writing from photographs. Cep gives some tips in her article, in particular how photographs can alter the way readers remember certain details as she cites a psychological study.

Model #2

The second model looks at a lesson plan for writing from photography by the New York Times. While the article does not offer much guidance besides many, many pictures, the authors categorize the images they offer into different sections. I view the images and their categories to get a better sense of what themes they grouped together. I feel understanding these criteria will help me determine the order of my short stories as I am still unsure how I will sort the stories. I am not sure if the chronological order or somehow thematically.

Model #3 Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

The third model analyses a collection of short stories similar in style to the ideas I wish to convey in my own work. While my subject matter will not be as dark or destructive as Johnson’s, he includes an narrator with a fragmented, catalytic personality, similar to what I want to show in my narrator. His powerful voice gives inspiration for my unknown character.

The short story collection presented here delves into both subgenres of short stories and melds the two together to present a photography-writing fusion. Unifying elements are the Ann Arbor and Detroit settings and its denizens.

PROJECT MAP

The Unnamed “I”
- A unnamed “I” -- the narrator in the collection will not be the individual characters (from the photographs), but instead an unknown, unnamed “I” as it travels through the city. The “I” works to create a sense of detachment between the reader and Ann Arbor, a juxtaposition designed to contrast the intimacy felt in viewing the photographs themselves (as photographs can be so personal)
- When look at pictures of location, these stories help detail the settings to give the reader a better understanding of where the stories take place.
- Look to Johnson’s work at how to include the narrator without giving indication to a name
Themes - what theme(s) will be included in this collection
- fragmented/scattered
  - The narrator goes through some sort of change of mind, which results in a more scattered thought process (i want to convey this change in tone throughout the short stories)
- The idea of ephemeralism or evanescence and the contrast created with a photograph
  - The crux of street photograph
  - How does this contrast the permanence of the photos themselves and the fleeting thoughts of the narrator
Select Images
- Detail extraction from images -- characters
  - The old man on the mountain

- - Lady smile

- - Culinary magic

- - Disinterested

- - Drunkard

- - Yellow-scarfed button seller

Detail extraction from images -- settings
- The DIA stairs

- the alleyway

Individual outlines for each story
- What is the arc of the story and how does it contribute to the overall story cycle
- Each image expands a short period of time and stretches it out to last several moments
- I want to create a contrast between the “snapshot” and the rambly rhetoric describing such a short moment in time
  - The narrator will tend to overthink and overanalyze many things
Structure (titles)
- Overall story title
- Table of Contents
  - Story titles
  - sequence
Aesthetics
- Book title
- Book cover
- Fonts
- Numbering style (roman numerals vs arabic numbers)

SAMPLE EXCERPT

an EXCERPT from OLD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN

I see him again today, my man on the mountain. Somewhere in my thoughts of recognizing the man, I named him. Naming is dangerous. Naming acknowledges ownership, and owning another human is unlawful, no matter how many times I do it in my mind. But you named him, half of me whispers. Your man on the mountain, it says. My spine tingles.

Walking towards me, he focuses on the wet pavement just a few paces ahead of his feet. Something in me wills him to look up, to look at me. The moment comes when we walk antiparallel, but his gaze remains forward, adamant, unperisiting. Consistent. I wonder if the consistency hurts, the constant repetition, same style, same clothes, same hat, same goddamn hat with the brown waves.

A shiny blue-green catches my eye, an aqua thermos tucked into his front pocket. He protects his hands from the icy blast of the November wind. The hat felt justified this time. My own ears are bright pink and stiff in the cold, but I can’t wear a hat. It flattens my hair. He looks so similar to the last time, I might as well have encountered him later on the same day. Is it the same day? The dropping temperature jars my memory, kicking me out the timeless tangles of my mind and back to the present. No, I definitely saw him months ago, not days. The pavement once wet now icy...it must’ve been months, not days.

Then why does he look the same? What is it with humans and consistency? The routine, the milky latte in the morning, the small glass of red before bed. We crave the stability of consistency. Consistency means norms, expectations of the day-to-day life, an ability to expect a certain outcome and see it through. A coffee in the morning from the cafe downstairs because the rent was paid and home would always be above the cafe downstairs. Some wine in the evening because the paycheck made it to the bank, covered expenses, with room for other pleasures. But what happens when the consistency fails? Do we tuck small aqua thermoses in our front pockets because we can no longer afford the lattes from the cafe downstairs? And wear blue jackets in all weather because the blue jacket is now the only jacket?

My eyes drift up from the thermos, following the metal trail of the zipper until the lapels, spread wide to accommodate his scarf. My eyes catch black text on a white button, a stark, all caps affair. “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” Immediately, I think but he’s not black. Half of me reaches its hand out and slaps the other half across the cheek. Smack. Such things must not be thought -- they are not right. The half of me cupping its bruised cheeks reaches out and prods the better half and gingerly asks why, why are they not right. The slapping half gives no answer.

The man has walked beyond the abilities of my peripheral vision and out of my sight. My neck itches to crain, to pivot and get another glimpse of my old man on the mountain. Instead, I walk forward.

REFLECTION

Making this newspaper has been quite the journey. I initially started the template in Photoshop, which proved to be quite difficult, because Photoshop is not meant to handle this many text layers with such ease -- Adobe built InDesign to better accommodate layouts and text boxes. The alignment of everything as the end, the final layout, definitely felt the most difficult, as I do not extensively understand InDesign. While I had used InDesign in a previous project, my understanding was limited to the simple manipulations. Once I got the basics down (and googled many, many questions), I had so much fun creating the InDesign template. The fake newspaper revolves around stupid comedy and silly puns, so I included ridiculous names for the reporters’ names and obviously photoshopped the UFO into the front page image.

To contrast the apparent silliness in the titles themselves, I wanted to include serious thematic elements in the stories. The UFO article serves as medium to convey campus opinions on ending DACA and keeping Dreamers in college, while the canine article works to touch upon sexual harassment on campus. However my sample draft does not include the cover stories themselves. The sketch draft gives greater detail as to the ideas I hope to convey in the newspaper stories. Instead, I hope to communicate these themes in the future, perhaps in the future or on my own as a personal creative project. Looking at the headlines, I struggled to find a seamless way in which to include both the humor and the serious methods, as these pieces (as noted in the Genre Analysis section) are quite brief. The physical restraints of the document dimensions and the other components of the newspaper also restricted the amount of text I could place in the headline.

Aside from the headlines, the photocaptions were also immensely fun to write. Many of the articles I researched detailed lengthier photocaptions, which I think came from standalone photo essays. The newspaper models, on the other hand, had shorter photocaptions, often one sentence to tell the subject, action, place and time. My experience writing captions for the Daily further corroborated this. I therefore chose to include shorter captions in my newspaper, which also worked well with my limited space options. In the future, I want to find out how to reduce the seemingly automatic margins that appear around the textboxes. The captions right now seem to take up unnecessary space, and I am not sure how to reduce the margins.

Looking to the final project, I reflect on the processes of making experiment one and experiment two. Comparing experiment one to experiment two, I enjoyed making the later more. I see more potential in the newspaper than the photobook. The newspaper, as well as my interested in photojournalism is far newer than creating photobooks, as I have consumed photography in its “traditional” or purely “photographic form” since high school. I see greater potential for developing my photography and writing skills in the newspaper.