One Click and a Thousand Words are Spoken

Image retrieved from: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/worth-1000-words-william-beasley.html 

Ansel Adams once said, “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” The social media site Instagram is entirely focused on the sharing of photos, whether they be selfies, food, nature, or art. Instagram will have it covered.

Focusing on the words of Adams it is clear that words are not always needed in certain places, perhaps it’s better filled with silence and the adorning of photographs of the past. The key memories they hold for that time and place, how you will forever remember that place due to the thousands of words whispered through a photograph. These words create a narrative and a story for that memory. So little is actually spoken when viewing a picture or an iconography, but every viewer has a universal understanding. Pictures and iconography have no language or cultural barrier, that way they are ideal for the developing world.

Though in saying that words aren’t obsolete, words both spoken and written hold the power. As described by Tuan in 1991 (p. 684), words have the power to change an area into a settlement, into a home, or into a town by giving it a name and a purpose. Before it was a space, but after a name it became a place. A place associated with culture and people, laws and regulations, and a governing body to protect the newly formed place. Words also shape the place we live in through literature. Victoria Kuttainen mentioned in the lecture this week about how English literature has shaped our way of seeing the world. How all the classics we are forced to read in school are predominantly English, examples include Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austin. Sometimes a picture isn’t actually a picture at all, but screen shot of a conversation, a reverberating lyric, or a quote. Literature is dominating in every way, as everything needs a title.

References:

•        Adams, A. (unknown). International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved from: http://www.iphf.org/hall-of-fame/ansel-adams/
•        Kuttainen, V. (2015). BA1002: Space: Networks, Narratives, and the making of place, week 5 notes [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
•        Tuan, Y. (1991). Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Language and the Making of Place: A narrative-Descriptive Approach (pp. 684-696). Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2563430