Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris

"In May 2007, I spent nine days living with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the United States . . . I documented the entire experience with a plodding sequence of 3,214 photographs, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport, and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant 'photographic heartbeat'."

The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris

This site gets more intriguing the more time you spend there. Harris tells the story of a trip to Barrow Alaska to tag along on a whale hunt. Aside from a brief statement, the story is told entirely through a series of photographs. What makes it work is the innovative website and the way the photographs are presented--explained here.

Though it would be much more difficult, one could use some of these ideas to organize and display a large collection of historic photographs such as the Curtis photographs.

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