Mary Ann Caws
new york
TRANSLATES: FRENCH
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Sunday, May 3, 2009 10:18AM
Visual Storytelling
Most of all I loved Jonathan Ames' Harry call, with which he opened and closed this session -- heartfelt, warm, loud, vibrating...
he organized the session aroung "origin stories" -- what started the three visual storytellers -- Emmanuel Guilbert, David Polonsky, Shaun Tan -- on their way. In one case, it was the contact sheet -- seeing side by side the photos led to the idea of the story in p ictures. Interesting, Guilbert pointed out that drawing and photosgraphs are always trying to kill each other. So they need their correct space.
Polonsky pointed out the challenge of illustrating someone else's memory. Shaun Tan, author of "The Arrival," said that to tell a good immigrant story, you would have to go to a country you had never seen.. like Perth, in its isolation.
Ames and the others pointed out the influence of visual stories like Alison Bechtel's, and Charles Bukowski's ,and the creator of Snowman, pointing out the wonderfulness of ordinary space.
As to the question, "who shaped you?" the answers were multiple, of course, and overall, this really inspiring session (for those of us reaching out for new ways of doing our work) added up to what Shaw used to say: "We should use ourselves," using our talent to communicate, to realize our responsibility in art as well as our personal motivation.
The point of language along with the visual is that it "slows down the looking," always a good thing.
We all loved the tale told by the creator of Tintin, who received a letter from a child disappointed in one of the films because the hero in it didn't have the same voice as the one in the book. How super a tale!
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