A Photo Teacher |

© Lauren Greenfield, Thin, 2006 (left) and Bruce Gilden, Coney Island, 2006 (right)

© Paul Turounet, Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For, 2009

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Photography and technology have always been inseparable. As much as the medium is about vision, concepts, and ideas among other things, it is also about technological advancements. The wet-plate has become a silicon chip to capture what is front of the lens. Small, intimate daguerreotypes and tintypes that were once shared with family and friends have transformed into websites that can be seen by anyone at any given time no matter where they are.

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This ever-changing nature of technology is providing photographers and visual artists tremendous possibilities to share their work as a multimedia experience and as such reach new audiences. Whether as a short Quicktime video or as an iPodcast, the viewing of photographs is activated with the use of audio (spoken word, sound and music), and video as an encompassing multimedia experience of storytelling. Such presentation strategies, such as those produced by VII Multimedia and Magnum Photos In Motion, have provided photographers, and particularly documentary photographers, the ability to expand upon the visual experience of the photographic image as well as heighten the narrative possibilities by placing the work within a more complex context.

With this in mind, take a look at the multimedia presentations produced by VII Multimedia and Magnum Photos In Motion:

Which multimedia essay or podcast caught your interest?

What was it that you found particularly interesting and effective (or problematic) about the presentation both conceptually and visually?

In consideration of your own documentary photographic practice and your current work, how might you use the possibilities of a multimedia presentation?