The expectation of narrative in the photograph.

The Expectation of Narrative in the Photograph is an investigation into the expectation of the narrative structure within and outside the photograph. The means of this exploration is to uncover the type of narrative structure that is in place in the photograph, and at what point in our reading of the still photographic image does this narrative structure come into play. By looking at the various types of photographs (found anonymous photographs to postcards to fine art prints from individuals such as: Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Edward Weston and Richard Avedon) that are in circulation in today's contemporary society, I present a theoretical exploration of an expected narrativity being implicit in the photograph. To complement this photographic narrativity, I also look into the literary equivalent and theories of realism found in the work of William Faulkner, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway.

In the latter sections of the text, I look at three distinctive bodies of photographic work. Therefore the issue of a-temporal in medias res narrativity is a key aesthetic feature and factor when rading and looking at and into the work of Cindy Sherman, Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Robert Frank. To parallel the aesthetics of this investigation, I also use a phenomenological position, borrowed from Husserl's theories of temporal understanding and Bergson's theory of perpetual present, to outline a consideration of reverse causality in the photographic act (the creating of a photograph) which helps the reader come to define and read the resulting photograph as a historical trace of a larger story.

The text advances the understanding of a photographic narrativity which traditionally tends to be seen under the rubric of filmic or literary narrative structures. The central argument of the text will therefore expand the notion that there is a certain type of narrative which is particularly photographic and that a revision of this distinctive narrativity will open up further debates and dialogues of a narrative photographic retelling.