Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow FSA Documentary: Always pair a portrait with the setting that person lives in
- Type
- Set in FSA Documentary's manner (Log place, date and situation in a fixed form, never opinion), and let Photo Essay's lettering (Write captions in a voice apart from the body text) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in FSA Documentary's material (Monochrome throughout, camera height matched to the subject); bring in exactly one thing from Photo Essay (Full-page frames open and close, denser pages between).
- Colour
- Build on #e7e4e2, #7a7a7a, #171614 and admit one accent from #e1d9c6, #9d2e2c, #2e3648.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- FSA Documentary Emphasizing the look of hardship becomes the quick route to sympathy, and what was meant as a record turns the people in it into a spectacle.
- Photo Essay Good pictures get lined up without a sequence being designed, every spread arrives at the same pitch, and the reader loses any reason to turn the page.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from FSA Documentary (style, 1935–1944) and their accent from Photo Essay (layout, 1936–1972). ## What to make Make the kind of thing FSA Documentary exists for: program records for agencies and foundations that keep their subjects' dignity, or long-term community documentation built so it can be searched later. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from FSA Documentary - Portraits preserving dignity - Living conditions described - The archive as state project - Field information in captions Composition: Always pair a portrait with the setting that person lives in. Type and lettering: Log place, date and situation in a fixed form, never opinion. ## Accent comes from Photo Essay, used sparingly - Sequenced narrative arcs - Size contrast across spreads - The full-page key image - Captions that narrate Let one material quality come from it: Full-page frames open and close, denser pages between. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #e7e4e2, carry the structure in #7a7a7a and #171614, and let a single accent come from #9d2e2c. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: trust, intimacy, calm, exhilaration. ## What goes wrong - FSA Documentary: Emphasizing the look of hardship becomes the quick route to sympathy, and what was meant as a record turns the people in it into a spectacle. - Photo Essay: Good pictures get lined up without a sequence being designed, every spread arrives at the same pitch, and the reader loses any reason to turn the page. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- FSA Documentary 1935–1944 / Style / Photography Movements
The documentary program of Depression-era America's Farm Security Administration. Lange's Migrant Mother and 270,000 archived negatives defined the public role of documentary.
- Photo Essay 1936–1972 / Layout / Publishing and Editing
The page form LIFE perfected: photographs edited into narrative arcs. Spread-scale contrasts, opening and closing images and the voice of captions gave photography a story grammar.
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