The Reader, 2013

Philip Jarmain grew up near London, Ontario, with part of his childhood spent in Switzerland and Ireland. There were also many family trips to Mexico. His mother is a textile artist and fathers an entrepreneur. A childhood love of storytelling led to early fascination with film, photography and cameras. dShort dramas shot with an 8 mm wind-up camera were a passion. Later, his training was in film (Vancouver Film School), and for some years he worked in lighting for feature films and episodic television, and after that as stills photographer for film.

While establishing himself as a full time artist in photography, Jarmain supports himself as a commercial photographer specializing in conceptual advertising, based in Vancouver, where he lives, and Toronto. In this area he is a recipient of multiple Lürzers Archive and Communication Arts awards as well as other international honors.

Since I was a child I have always loved dark stories.  I especially had a great fondness for Shakespearean tragedies.  When I decided to begin a series of more complex story telling images I was initially set on trying to capture a scene from William Shakespeare’s King Lear.  After assembling approximately twenty storyboards that each attempted to tell a brief segment from the play King Lear I gave up in frustration.  I wished to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end in a single image and I found Shakespeare’s King Lear to be not ideal for this purpose.  

I then remembered a Twilight Zone Episode from when I was very young – it was from the late 1950’s called “Time Enough at Last”.  This was a modern simple tragedy that I remembered vividly.  It was a very dark story and I believed it could be told in a single image.  I didn’t wish to re tell the story as much as I wished to utilize the underlying premise.  

The story line of the image “The Reader” is based on my memory of this Twilight Zone Episode and the challenge was now to create layers of detail to the storytelling within this photograph.  Small intricate details such as the titles of the books in the foreground being important novels I have read.  The quotes written on the walls were quotes I grew up with and always new by heart.  The large size and clarity of this photograph was crucial so that these details were coherent to the audience.  The chandelier powered by banks of car batteries giving a warm tungsten glow with the cool dusk window light to create mood and atmosphere.  Methods to give the image a cinematic feel.

After four days of painting, prop styling and set decorating an empty space in a heritage building the narrative started to take form.  Lighting the space and the talent completed the story and enabled us to capture a wonderful performance.  It is a modern vignette of a simple little tragedy.  I am pleased because executing this image proved to me that within the photographic medium you can tell a complete story with a beginning middle and end within a single image.  The small subtle visual details were what gave the narrative some dimension and helped define the figure’s character.  

As a photographer I am fond of conceptual projects and am passionate about pushing forward with many more.  These are different from my other work in that it is an intense collaborative process much like making a film.  It takes a lot of time to develop this team and the relationships necessary to create imagery such as The Reader however it is certainly rewarding.