"In a world of words, pictures still matter"

In a similar (though obliquely so) context to some recent threads, an interesting short piece by Stuart Franklin (ex-President of Magnum):

In a world of words, pictures still matter

Yes, "one picture is worth a thousand words".

IDK about that ? most people are NOT impressed by image, be it in silver or in ink, etching, litho, . . . . nobody cares. . . . as long as their name or comment is in discussion and for a brief moment they are at the center of attention . .. . is what matters today. Image is 2nd or 3rd tier. definately NOT top shelf!!

pdeeh said:

In a similar (though obliquely so) context to some recent threads, an interesting short piece by Stuart Franklin (ex-President of Magnum):

In a world of words, pictures still matter

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Of course pictures matter but they are not enough to describe reality. For that, we need words but then the question is : which words?

Dali said:

Of course pictures matter but they are not enough to describe reality. For that, we need words but then the question is : which words?

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Words can also be limiting. For example, if I titled this image duck, would you also see the rabbit, and vice versa? Which is reality? What of images which are what Stieglitz denominated equivalents?

Gosh it seems to be a week for resurrecting ancient threads of mine

I wonder which threads they were I had in mind? Too long ago now to remember!

Anyhoo, do carry on...

faberryman said:

Words can also be limiting.

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I would never exchange literature for photography.

Well I just went back and read the linked article again. Mostly pretty sound stuff I reckon.
I thought this paragraph interesting ...

Stuart Franklin said:

... Today, almost everyone has a way of taking pictures ... The crisis that has faced photography has often been blamed on “the other” – the market, amateurs, journalists with iPhones – never on its own lack of purpose or imagination.

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I suppose in "the other" could have been included not knowing the zone system, not using just one film and one developer, not having read books, the Internet generally, soccer moms with cameras, and perhaps severe age-related dyspepsia.

(you know he only does it just to annoy, because he knows it teases)

Gru*

hey pdeeh

but the other could be those with imagination and purpose, they are still the outsider for ruining everything.
the photographs in the article are great images, but unfortunately we don't need great anymore, because of "the others"
"good enough" will do...

Since adopting the printed book as my favoured creative outlet, a lot of photographic problems disappear. The important thing is the series hangs together as a whole.

It's just another text where pictures have been conceptually muddled with photographs.

Pictures have been around for thousands of years as paintings and drawings and now, comparatively recently, as digital constructs. All of these forms depend on a coded description of the picture being held in a brain or computer and then output by a mark-making device. Common mark-making devices include an artist's hand with brush or pencil, an ink-jet printer, or a display monitor.

It has been centuries since all but the terminally naive have believed the content of pictures made from editable descriptions. Artists, painters, sketchers, digital picture-makers, all can be admired for their creativity, personal style, pictorial ingenuity, vituoso command of their medium, and so on. But not for the dispassionate descriptive truth of their pictures. Yet even here you can believe a picture is "true" if the picture-maker says it is. But only if you surrender your disbelief to the picture-maker. The medium itself, painting, drawing, or digital guarantees nothing.

I'll assert that photojournalism, as a means of conveying inherently factual information, cannot credibly be based on pictures made out of freely editable descriptions. An alternative picture-making means does exist that avoids descriptions of any kind. In this process a lens forms a real optical image of illuminated subject matter and then casts this image upon a sensitive surface that becomes physically and permanently changed. The changes are made visible, but not edited for content, by a chemical process. The sensitive surface thus changed is the picture in question. The name of this process, correctly and exclusively, is photography. It is the only scam-proof way to do legitimate photojournalism.

Maris said:

The changes are made visible, but not edited for content, by a chemical process. The sensitive surface thus changed is the picture in question. The name of this process, correctly and exclusively, is photography. It is the only scam-proof way to do legitimate photojournalism

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maris
people have been altering and manipulating truthful photographs into something else since 1839
just because it was made by chemicals does not mean in any way that it was the truth. and manipulation
doesn't stop at the processing/printing stage people have been manipulating scenes using focal lenses, and exposure
techniques to further whatever agenda they have. it has nothing ot do with pixels.

jnanian said:

maris.
people have been altering and manipulating truthful photographs into something else since 1839

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Of course they have. Photographs have been penciled, painted, bleached, etc since the beginning. But these techniques aren't photographic even though they may have been executed by people calling themselves photographers

just because it was made by chemicals does not mean in any way that it was the truth.

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"Truth" is an easy term to drop into a discourse but it is meaningful only in relation to a proposition or statement. "Chemicals" aren't "true" but a statement about them might be. I wonder what such a statement might look like. So no one dies wondering here's my first attempt at a true statement connecting chemicals and photographs:
Because chemicals are unaware of the content of a photograph they cannot re-arrange that content in the process of bringing the photograph into visibility. I suspect with enough brain-bustin' many other true statements could be devised.

and manipulation doesn't stop at the processing/printing stage people have been manipulating scenes using focal lenses,
and exposure techniques to further whatever agenda they have.

Click to expand...

This looks muddled. "Manipulating scenes" is just "subject management" no more inherent to the photographic process than organising props as a preliminary for painting or drawing. As for "focal lenses" all realist picture-making techniques use lenses to form real optical images of external subject matter. These techniques include painting and drawing. Where photography differs is that the "sandwich" of optical image and light-sensitive surface that happens in the back of the camera (or darkroom!) becomes the picture; not so with painting, drawing, or digital. "exposure" in photography doesn't manipulate scenes. What it achieves is recording more or less of the energy of the real optical image in the sensitive surface. Changing exposure doesn't re-arrange image content.

it has nothing ot do with pixels

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Abstract and technical follows: Actually it has everything to do with pixels or more generally "discrete image elements". Paintings, drawings, and digital pictures are serial accumulations of brush-strokes, lines, dots, whatever, generated from a picture description that has no obligatory relationship to anything. Photographs are made of marks that have an obligatory one to one correspondence with changes caused in a sensitive surface by an interpenetrating electromagnetic field. It can't be otherwise as the electromagnetic field, alias real optical image, and the sensitive surface occupy the same space at the same time at the moment of exposure. And for completeness it should be pointed out that the information transfer in a photograph is a parallel process, not serial like those other methods.[/QUOTE]

Maris said:

Changing exposure doesn't re-arrange image content

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if i expose sheet of film for 4 or 2 or 8 seconds instead of 1/250 th S and it was a street with cars driving back and forth
the cars would vanish. if it was a turbine i photographed, its blades would disappear &c.
it is not scene management, it is is re-arranging content.

It takes real creativity to get a photograph to speak a thousand words. No matter how many pictures we are able to make, the few that truly talk to us are very rare.

Taking a look at this thread, it seems like in 2015 words didn't come easily ...

Joking apart, (IMHO) the thread title should more accurate the other way around nowadays: "In a world of pictures, words still matter" ... And by changing the order we can clearly see that we can use both descriptions indistinctly (words & pictures) and although there is something in common with them, the mission is fulfilled when the "writing" ends and the writing makes sense, even if only for the writer ... the rest, is the delicate matter, if both the writer and the reader have or do not have the knowledge, which means having those 1000 words - or more - in their heads.

Not to mention that some images leave us speechless ... which leads us to the silence of the emotions.

Regards!

A recent debate about instituting qualifying examinations for teachers (defeated by union) revealed an appreciable number of NY state teachers unable to read at 8th grade level. In our present popular society words (other than the four letter kind) seem to be endangered, not pictures.

It is a continued source of amusement to me that, despite each generation being - according to the prior one - more stupid than any other, technological progress nevertheless continues apace; in fact, more rapidly with every passing year.

Even more curiously (though more worrying and far less amusing), it is the prior generations - apparently the epitome of wisdom and intelligence in comparison to the current youngsters, and who actually run the World - who seem to be threatening humanity and the planet as a whole with grotesque depredations of poverty, inequality, war and ecological disaster.

A conundrum indeed ...

pdeeh said:

It is a continued source of amusement to me that, despite each generation being - according to the prior one - more stupid than any other, technological progress nevertheless continues apace; in fact, more rapidly with every passing year.

Even more curiously (though more worrying and far less amusing), it is the prior generations - apparently the epitome of wisdom and intelligence in comparison to the current youngsters, and who actually run the World - who seem to be threatening humanity and the planet as a whole with grotesque depredations of poverty, inequality, war and ecological disaster.

A conundrum indeed ...

Click to expand...

Technological Progress is inversely proportional to Wisdom and Intelligence, hence the speed.
Prior generations fit into many generations throughout our World's History, hence the disaster.