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The statement below seems to be a key one concerning images, or at least photography, and words.
Photography and words
Despite all claims or fears of the contrary, we do not live in a visual culture (see Reading images). The visuality of our culture is always text-based, or text-mediated. To put it bluntly: you will always need words to say that: “an image is stronger than thousand words”.
As Victor Burgin puts it, in an often quoted passage of his no less often quoted collection Thinking Photography:
“We rarely see a photograph in use which is not accompanied by writing: in newspapers the image is in most cases subordinate to the text; in advertising and illustrated magazines there tends to be a more or less equal distribution of text and images; in art and amateur photography the image predominates, though a caption or title is generally added. But the influence of language goes beyond the fact of the physical presence of writing as a deliberate addition to the image. Even the uncaptioned photograph, framed and isolated on a gallery wall, is invaded by language when it is looked at: in memory, in association, snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other; what significant elements the subject recognises ‘in’ the photograph are inescapably supplemented from elsewhere.”Burgin 1982: 192)
From PHOTHEREL
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