Engström and the possibilities of Narration

Last week I participated in a photography workshop led by celebrated Swedish photographer JH Engström, whose books Trying To Dance and Haunts are strange and lyrical in a distinctly Scandinavian way.  I'm very inspired by photographers like Engstrom, who create profoundly poetic work by photographing the world around them in a seemingly straightforward way.  

For me the point of a workshop is to use the energy and atmosphere of the 5 days to push past self-imposed boundaries.  I participated as a filmmaker and JH encouraged me to try adding my own text and voice as a narration over the 'image-films', like TRAUM, that I usually make to work with music.  In the past I have avoided narration like the plague, dreading hearing my own voice and believing that the footage should be able to tell the story.  I made this short film after an awkward failure on the first night of the workshop after we had been set the task of photographing/filming something you identify with...

I realised after the workshop that a narrated voice-over might be the best way to link the different ideas I'm exploring with this Memory research project.  I can start to see how I could make a film that recounts the journey of the research itself, structured around the questions and themes contained in this blog, narrated by myself in a fairly free and subjective way.  One of my favorite films is The Gleaners and I by Agnes Varda, in which she effortlessly narrates a road trip of research, discovery and random encounter.  For the NL festival in March I would like to try to emulate this kind of essayist approach to explore the question: 'What is happening in my sister's head'