Thursday, October 24, 2013

Is a picture still worth a thousand words?

In yesterday's post, I wondered why Humans of New York really soared when the photographer added quotes to his photos. Here's the beautiful answer from Le Grand Lapin:

Jan,

The quotes help break through the "image callus" that we have all grown over the past five or seven years. Since everyone on the planet now carries a camera with them at all times, individual images are cheap and easy to produce. The Instagram effect - instant "art" - further devalues images in general. The "decisive moment" has been eroded to include any moment, anywhere.

Words, however, can't be mass-produced and are still a valued commodity that require some level of effort to create, curate and publish. Intelligent words, describing a place in time, a feeling or a reason to be are so rare that combined with a photograph of the creator, they have the heft and value of gold.


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P.S. from Jan: It's so wonderful to feel the power of a creative community -- to put a question out there and get an answer. Makes it seem far less solitary in my quiet home office. Thanks, Big Bunny!

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