A Thousand Word Photos
Short Stories Inspired by Photographs
A Thousand Word Photos invites photographers to share a photo with a writer who in turn is asked to create a short story of a thousand words inspired by the image they receive.
Selected short stories are then published online here, and read to stroke patients at Hospitals across London by actors working with the charity Interact.
They are also shared here for everyone who enjoys photography, short stories and imagination.
Creative Director – Ben Lambert
Photo Editor – Alexia Singh
Edith, my love
Photograph by Yigit Gunel, Story by Jo Jakeman
Edith, my love, is that you up ahead? Can you not wait for me a while?
Let me sit on that bench and catch my breath. It gets away from me, from time-to-time, but I’ll snare it next time it goes by. See, I’m not ready to go through that gate just yet, so I think I’ll rest here in the sun.
Edith, would you take a look at them flowers? Red and yellow tulips standing as straight and proud as sentries. They’re so pretty and just like the ones you had in your bridal bouquet. Did I get that wrong? Sorry, my love, but all flowers smell just as sweet to me. I’m an old man, a slow man, and you can’t begrudge me my sketchy memories of so long ago. Read the rest of the story…
Escape from Gravity
Photograph by Yigit Gunel, Story by Amina Rose
The fragile contraption sat in space. It did not seem to be moving at all, in the weightless expanse, but Celeste knew it was in fact travelling at the rate of eighteen thousand miles per hour, or five miles per second. She gazed at Earth, filling the horizon, teeming with billions of people and thousands of cities. And on it, somewhere, vanishingly small, Pedro worked in his lab.
It had been that moment with Pedro that had hooked Celeste on space. Watching Pedro as they played in cardboard boxes on a hard pavement, as he overbalanced and fell over, she had wondered, bizarrely, why he didn’t just fall upwards, off the planet, and saw, for the first time, vividly, the immensity of Earth, and Earth’s magnetic field, so that although they seemed to be standing still, on top of still ground, in reality they were hurtling through space, spinning as they went, circling the sun and furthermore speeding away through space, the whole solar system rushing on. Read the rest of the story…