Facing Forward

“Don’t take pictures of things, take pictures about things.” Narrative photo series take this advice to the next level. I think of them as the photographic equivalent of a graphic novel. Prospective series are purpose-built with shots styled to serve as frames of a story. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re making one until you’re well into it—it happened to me.

My first series began as a concept for a single photograph. My child-of-the-eighties Cold War fascination gave rise to a vision of a female operative carrying the nuclear football. I already had the wardrobe, and I built a replica of the football with a thrift store briefcase and some old electronics I had lying around. I chose an overcast day, grabbed my camera and tripod, and headed for the backyard to create the shot.

The shot that started it all. Look familiar?

Mission accomplished, but it seemed a shame to use my little prop only once. I conceived a second shot, mainly to prove to myself that I could build a snoot and use it. An afternoon of trial and error at this very desk produced a second shot on the same Cold War theme. Two points define a line, so now I wondered: how did the first shot lead to the second? What events transpired in between, and more importantly, would they make cool photos?

Snoot success.

I had the middle and end of the story. All that was left was some exposition and how the football got from the operative to the woman in the final photo. I was my own model for all the women in the story (and two photos did require compositing), and I was able to lure my husband into posing as the lone male character. He still hasn’t let me forget how hard I jammed my boot heel into his back. I swear it wasn’t intentional; I was just that focused on getting the shot. I suffer for my art, and sometimes my loved ones get caught in the blowback.

The narrative is as follows: an operative waits for her mark carrying the object of interest. He walks by, and she falls into step behind him with weapon in hand. She takes him down, and relieves him of the nuclear football. The operative then makes her way to the rendezvous point. She meets with a hacker at a cafe , who takes possession of the device. The hacker does her thing, then receives payment from a Soviet government leader. Instead of initiating World War III, the government leader uses the launch codes to cause all American warheads to self-destruct (thanks, Google Translate). I added football-themed captions and took Jay’s suggestion for the title, Football Season. It’s dark, it’s stylized, it’s retro, and it’s all mine.

Blindside. Interception. Intentional grounding. Bootleg. Handoff. Blitz. Eligible receiver. Endzone.

This series took months to complete. I took one photo at a time, as I had time. I feel like each photo can stand alone as being “about something”. Together they form a larger narrative and relate the characters to each other, like scenes in a movie. My favorite thing about it is that I had no idea this would be the finished form when I started working on that first photo. Photography, like travel, can take us places we didn’t expect when we allow ourselves to go along for the ride.