text vs image

[flemming_s._christensen1]

Sally, you mentioned Dorothea Lange had a desire to fuse text and image. Is this immanent in her later work, which images in particular, any hints? I have browsed The Library of Congress, may be there are other sources?

Flemming

[sallymckay-lepage]

Flemming, considering the state of my garage chances are I'll never find the original paper,

at least not on New Years day. (It was a good night)

 

Anyway to help clarify my thought today I found a fairly reliable <a href="http://

content.cdlib.org/view;jsessionid=hyfVcvo5HK4TNhHE?

docId=ft3f59n5wt&chunk.id=omca_727">web site</a>, which indicates how Lange and

Taylor would submit both their field notes, captions, written quotations and so on along

with the images to the FSA. Basically by comparing Langes work to Krugers I attempted to

establish a dialogue between the written word and the photographic image, a sort of

symbiotic relationship in which the text informed the image and visa versa. Okay now my

head hurts. I'll need to find the paper to give you a better idea of where I was headed.

 

Happy New Year all.

 

Sally

[flemming_s._christensen1]

Sally, Happy New Year and please accept my apologies for making you even think of the state of your garage on this first happy day of the year. Your link was terrific, thank you.

 

Langes later work apparently had a more personalized artistic expression where

 

ideas were translated into pictures and it may be that the final results of this course will help advance the frontiers of this visual language

 

as she put it herself.

[jsfyfe]

I believe that in many instances the two mediums support and strengthen one another. You may want to visit the works of Wright Morris, specifically "Photographs & Words".

[al_kaplan1]

I love the concept of text AND image. It might be a story about what's featured in the photo or a photo shot to illustrate some aspect of what's in the article. Either way the synergy is usually much greater than the sum of the parts. Now that I've embraced retirement I started doing a blog. Words and images together, a post every day. Some of the photographs are current while others date back to the 1960's. Not having an editor or an art director looking over my shoulder is very liberating!

[john_macpherson]

I firmly believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, any picture, it just depends what those words are, and the order they come in.

[robert_hughes4]

- on the other hand, everybody here is using text. I don't see anybody using pictures to prove their point?

[nozar_kishi]

We see "things" for which we have words. Since an image is, at the time of inception, but a collection of words, then strength of a text over an image (or an image over a text) comes from the skill (of the writer or photographer) rather than media ... Dostoevsky vs. Bresson.

[timothy1]

Both are vehicles of communication. The more elaborate we are and the more types of communication we use, the more clear we will be. It also depends on where we are going with our message. Who is our audience? If I were going to go up in the hills and drive on dirt roads (or if I were to drive on the streets of Boston) I would take an off road vehicle, whereas if I were going to drive on smooth highways I would rather drive a car built for cruising. Text defiantly has its place. Imagery defiantly has its place. Often times they are strengthened by their support of each other. Often they are strong and beautiful on their own. I guess what it comes down to is knowing what you want to say and know who you are saying it to.