Paco Guerrero on Photo Essays
by David B. Lim
Fred Barnard once said, “one picture paints a thousand words”. But why read a thousand words, when ten photos can take you to another world.
Our second Z Academy speaker for this season at Zone V Camera Club is the consummate travel photographer and visual storyteller, Paco Guerrero on the topic “Photo Essays”.
His voluminous works have graced the pages of notable travel magazines Travel & Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, as well as commercial work for The Peninsula Hotel.
Guerrero starts off his talk on his early childhood inspirations flipping through National Geographic magazines, looking at Cartier-Bresson images, using his father’s Canon AE-1 and lastly, backyard chickens.
He got me at the chicken part.
He continued the discussion with a photo walk from the early cavemen’s paintings to the present-day masters to illustrate the progression of the photo essay. He then delineates the classic from contemporary visual style with photo picks of great photographers.
Classic visual styles like the pioneering works of Margaret Bourke-White (on the Great Depression)
and W. Eugene Smith (on A Country Doctor).
Their highlighted photos, all in B&W, filled up the frame and emphasized emotions – emotions conveyed within the photo as well as those elicited from the viewers.
We then venture into the works of contemporary masters like Sam Abell, Alex Webb and William Albert Allard and their in-color photo essays breaking away from photo rules to create their own visual styles.
Other samples of visual styles were those of Stella Kalaw (house interior/loneliness) and Maika Elan (gay couples/lifestyles).
Preceding photos all by Maika Elan
Looking at each photo may look like snapshots, but when seen together in a series, the essay starts to weave a compelling story, whetting our interest to go back at each photo and feel them. Maybe even making us read the accompanying thousand words.
After an hour of visual smorgasbord, Guerrero then ask what ties all these depicted famous photographers.
They were all photo essayists.
Their messages were that of emotions through a narrative visual style as opposed to a thematic approach. Once again, Guerrero stresses emotion is the key component as opposed to information.
He quotes, “a successful travel photograph doesn’t show what a place looks like, it shows what a place feels like”. Can a photo exude emotion without people in it?
I was expecting a quickie formula of how to make an effective photo essay like the inane ‘rule of thirds’. Instead, Guerrero expounds on his philosophy when doing a photo essay on a travel photography assignment. He places great importance on choosing your subject and to know them, talk to them, getting a good feel of the subject and the environment. Aside from shooting portraits, take photos of their landscape, cultures, customs, and history. Food even. The images should exude a feeling of a time and place.
And then in conclusion, Guerrero further urges that if you think you are done, keep on shooting.
Postproduction, Guerrero advises to look at your contact sheets and analyze one’s photo series. Better yet, look at other’s contact sheet and study how they approach their subject matter.
Contact Sheet by Dennis Stock of James Dean, 1955, Times Square
What could be the establishing shot or what could have been done differently? Sometimes it is not the best photo chosen that describes the story best.
Lastly, I asked, what advantages would we get from doing a narrative photo series? Guerrero maintains that a photo essay mindset will help improve one’s photography by exploring the different facets of photography, help develop a visual style and possess a powerful visual storytelling tool.
Just then I wondered what were in those chicken shoot that was inspirational.
Francisco ‘Paco’ Guerrero, is the Executive Editor and co-founder at GRID magazine. Up his sleeves is a degree in Anthropology and Communications from Goldsmiths College, London. A stellar photographer who has been shooting travel and lifestyle images of bold-faced international clients while based in Spain and the Philippines.
