∴Words About Images∴

Do you write about your photos?

“The whole point of taking photos is so we don’t have to use our words.”

I reached out recently with a question: Do you write about your photos? I asked this question for a specific reason. Over the last few years my taste in what I photograph has changed a lot. I couldn’t find a thread through the images for quite a while, until I pulled a few out from a couple-month span and wrote about them. It was super useful for me, helping me realize what I was getting drawn to, and that in turn helped me focus my work going forward.

The answers I received ranged from cagey to poetic. Most seemed to think writing suggested a kind of failure on the part of the photograph to communicate. A few saw writing as a practical matter, a way to log technical details or provide supplementary information.

The minority opinion, and the one that happens to resonate with me, is that writing helps you understand what you are photographing and why. My photographs have become more and more a means of understanding my internal life through documenting my external one. Writing is the best tool I’ve found so far to help that along.

Here I’ll share some of the responses I received, paired with my photographs.

I shouldn't have to tell you how to feel about my work. If I do, I did it wrong.

 

I don't take photos to impose my feelings about the world on people.

I go out of my way to make sure my pictures don't tell a story.

If you need a sob story to make it good, then it was never a good picture.

The connection between my words and my photos is artistic, not analytical.

I wouldn't even know what to write.

The amount of overthinking in the "story behind" is really annoying.

It really helps me to figure out the project and gives me perimeters for the next outing.

Uhmm... No. I take photos and get paid for it, that's it.

The whole point of taking photos is so we don’t have to use our words.

What's really interesting is being able to go back and hear from that former version of myself and see what they were struggling with, and compare that to what I'm dealing with now.

Generally no.

When I photograph, I do it very intuitively. It's often, not always, only after looking at the images at home, that I can explain what drew me in.

Not as much as I should.

Do you write about your photos?