SEQUENCING - A Visit to SouQ AL HALAL

How do you tell a story with only photos? When you go out and take photos, you collect ideas and create a world - a structure. When you go back inside and start editing the photos, you’re creating sentences. When you start sequencing the photos, you’re creating paragraphs, chapters, and stories. Writing words is magic, because you get to convey meaning from one’s mind to another using shared symbolic writing. When you’re using photographs, it’s magic on a different scale - you’re conveying an immediate feeling with each photo, something inexplicable in words.

Despite me photographing and editing endlessly for the past years, I have not been able to create a sequence. I found myself wanting to edit each photo on its own, understand what each photo can give me, instead of focusing on an entire collection. I was creating the collection. I took the challenge to create a sequence of photos - a story - by going to Souq Al Halal - the sheep market in Ein Al Basha. I took the photos, I edited the photos, and then, I sequenced them. Shifting and replacing and moving the order of photos to see how it affects what is being said. How can I bring the viewer on a journey, and what is it that I want them to understand? Do I choose the photos that show the diversity of animals? Or show the photos of the things happening outside of the sheep and animals? The coffee being made, the breakfast being had, the sleeping going on? Should it be as simple as a time progression of my photos? A journey through my experience? Should I show the relationship between human and animal? With a large number of photos, you are choosing what you want to say by limiting what is being shown.

I wonder what you will understand when looking at this sequence. A fun exercise that will come useful when creating longer sequences in the future.