Text or photo? Which holds the greater power for public enlightenment?

Increasingly, newspapers, and in particular the tabloids are using photographic imagery as a way of highlighting a story that will attract readers to buy their paper. A photograph appeals to our emotions, and in many cases is a powerful tool, which can make an event far more memorable than the written accounts we read.

Journalists, it is said, are the eyes and ears of the public, therefore a photo captures a singular moment, and when we remove the use of digital enhancement from this equation, stands as evidential material, which in effect freeze frames a moment in history.

Therefore becoming an important tool for people who weren’t present at a particular event or incident. A photo in this context becomes a visual aid that acts as a window into somewhere most people would not have otherwise had access to.

Even broadsheet press such as the Guardian, have taken to producing a double page spread of photography which highlights an event or informs us of an interesting lens captured moment. The text in such articles takes a back seat. After all, it is said, a picture speaks a thousand words,the question to ask however is, are the correct words being spoken?

Without words, what is a photograph more than a vague moment in time, capturing what Henri Cartier Bressom describes as the ‘decisive moment.’ What is this decisive moment when open to incredible interpretation socially, and increasing manipulation technologically?

“In the newspaper, photographs have no meaning independent of their relationship to the words, graphic elements and other factors in the display which surround and penetrate them”. (Journalism and Popular Culture extract from Hall, 1973; 185.)

A photo in any shape or form takes a moment out of context, and alone, contains no past or future evidence of what made up the essence of that singular moment. The poignancy of heart breaking images of war torn families and devastation wreaked by floods and fires, yes, plays a part in fuelling human emotion, but without the text, which will bring the picture into line contextually, the photo remains just that, a timely and framed moment, worthless as anything more than a visual news aid.

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