Photo essay

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A photo essay is a set or series of photographs that are intended to tell a story or evoke a series of emotions in the viewer. Photo essays range from purely photographic works to photographs with captions or small notes to full text essays with a few or many accompanying photographs. Photo essays can be sequential in nature, intended to be viewed in a particular order, or they may consist of non-ordered photographs which may be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer. All photo essays are collections of photographs, but not all collections of photographs are photo essays. Photo essays often address a certain issue or attempt to capture the character of places and events. People who have undertaken photo essays include Bruce Davidson, W. Eugene Smith and Walker Evans.

"After School Play Interrupted by the Catch and Release of a Stingray" is a simple time-sequence photo essay

A photo essay can take a number of forms, including:

An article in a publication, sometimes a full page or a two-page spread. Newspapers and news magazines often have multi-page photo essays about significant events, both good and bad, such as a sports championship or a national disaster.
A book or other complete publication.
A web page or portion of a web site.
A single montage or collage of photographic images, with text or other additions, intended to be viewed both as a whole and as individual photographs. Such a work may also fall in the category of mixed media.
An art show which is staged at a particular time and location. Some such shows also fall in the category of installation art.
A slide show or similar presentation, possibly with spoken text, which could be delivered on slides, on DVD, or on a web site.