Dr ROBERT ORGAN

GLOBAL STORIES 2019

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Global Stories was an exhibition held in 2019 at the Four Corners Gallery, Bethnal Green, London. It comprised a series of photographs taken, as the name suggests, in various countries across the world. Some of the photographs derived from deliberately attending and recording pre-planned events, while others arose randomly from happening upon events that occurred during travel, akin to street photography. The concept of a story contained within a photograph has a good analogy with the term “compressed file format” used in recorded music. The photograph, a visual image taken in a fraction of a second, like the compressed file, contains all of the information that is required to recreate the whole. The key difference is that the imagination of the onlooker is required to rationalise the time, place and circumstance to complete the story. The principal challenge was always to capture the “decisive moment”, as expressed by the great photographer Hernri Cartier-Bresson, such that the “photograph was part of the event itself”. However, equally important to the photographer was ensuring that the aesthetic appeal of each photograph, in terms of composition, timing and capturing movement, was robust. Whenever appropriate, humour or the surreal were used to augment the story-telling. Satire was also used extensively in the titling of the photographs. One of the key observations from the series as a whole was the importance of rituals – work, religion, leisure etc - to give a structure in all countries and cultures. The rituals could be diverse and full of contrast, such as rich and poor, work and leisure, formal and informal and dynamic and static. Mostly, but not exclusively, people seemed to derive much pleasure by participating in the rituals. The photographs are an extraction from previous projects by the photographer and are all presented in black and white format. They were printed digitally using pigment inks on baryta coated paper for archival permanence. Click here or on the themes on the left hand side of the screen to see the photographs