The Printed Page

What would a printed photograph be without words? 

How much context is given to each photo? How so few words can go so far.
Title. Location. Date. 
Person. Occupation. Date.

With only the words that linger near a photograph, can you imagine what it looks like? 

By focusing on the language on the page, do you want to see the photograph even more? And how today if things aren’t made easy for us, we live likeThe Fox and the Grapes. 

The Internet doesn’t give you access to so many incredible photos that are available at your public library. The Internet rarely presents photographs in white space.

How even if you know the photograph that’s referenced, you still want to see it again. You see new things every time.

The beautiful entropy of pages. Inks mixing. Oil from people’s fingertips. Bits of food. Splashes of coffee. Wrinkles. Scratches. Wearing corners. All of these things telling their own stories. The marks of time and people before you.

How turning the page in a photo book can give you that unique moment of suspense and complete surprise. But you have to physically turn the pages. There are no digital tags that let you automatically jump to specific images. There is a deliberate order and pace to a book.

This idea of “no pictures allowed”. What you are and aren’t allowed to take pictures of. That somehow taking a picture of a picture is more valuable or dangerous to the work than writing or talking about it. 

The acquisition or appropriation of people’s names as some sort of self validation.

The value of printed photography and words.

The value of print.