words and images

Personal statements for me are not important in some of my work. Can someone view my photograph and just find it visually pleasing or does text have to accompany it?

The relationship between word and image, photo and description is interesting.

A photo may denote one thing or something else entirely, based on how it is described.

Which raises a question, can a photograph stand on its own or does it need a description?

“We could easily see these marks as something else-as an arrowhead or a pointer

Indicating a direction. To see this as an image of a tree means assigning that label

to it, giving it that name.”

(‘Word and Image’  W.J.T Mitchell)

 “works of art do indeed ‘speak for themselves’”

‘Art in theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas’ By Charles Harrison, Paul Wood

Joel Sternfeld

This is the crab apple tree in Central Park under which Jennifer Levin’s body was found on the morning of August 26, 1986. 

But with this image from Sternfeld, with text accompanying the image, the image is far stronger and Sternfeld is using text to make his conceptual work stronger.