The young Master Corrigan

So this is the image I'd like to discuss. I really like this particular picture a lot. It's very similar to the picture that we discussed in class about the cat and the mouse and their eternal conflict.

This image is also showing a complex relationship. However, it's different. It's telling its own story. It takes a few minutes to work through, but it obviously starts in the center somewhere. We have this yearbook, showing how two people from the class of '64 got together to make this child. We get one story below the yearbook, showing how the father left the mother when she got all knocked up. The mother had the child, but had to put her up for adoption. As we move up the right side, we see how she was adopted by a different woman, who shortly married, and then we get a final image of the girl all grown up.

What's interesting is that this picture relates a fairly complicated story with absolutely no words at all. My minimal explanation was a whole paragraph, and that's only explaining the immediate image. This is a compelling example of how the different medium allows for a different style of storytelling. It's utilizing the art, rather than the written word. If one's gonna write everything, why not just write a novel?

There are some little details that make the picture pretty interesting. I like how the adoption papers are shown going from the doctor to to pocket of the woman on the right hand side. It parallels the journey of the child from the biological to adoptive mother. It's a small detail that shows the connection very effectively. In the pictures representing the timeline of the girl's life, it starts off with the fetal picture on the right hand side, and it has all sharp edges. But on the far left, it's got a wavy line, indicating that this is only the beginning portion of her life. It's not the entire story. It's entirely communicated through a graphical medium.