In the end, I understood the relationship between image and word.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet our lives—our entire lives—are made of words. We make promises and contracts with words. We collaborate, or we fight. It is also said that a word can wound more deeply than a sword (something a photograph cannot do).
Ultimately, I realized that the long thread connecting photography to the word is *Story*. Every photo evokes an emotion that makes the thread of a story vibrate—a unique story for every human being who views the image. Thus, it is not merely a matter of image and word, but of image, story, and word. One can also travel the reverse path: from words to story to images. That is cinema—film. Directors and producers transform words and stories into emotions, and consequently into images. Through their sensitivity, they are able to guide a process that leads from words and story to emotion, and finally to the image.
We human beings have minds filled with stories. We cannot grasp anything unless it belongs to a story. Stories are so strong and powerful that they serve as the thread binding images and words together.
Some say that photographs are enigmatic.
True. But why?
It is simple: there is a story to be divined, and everyone can tell their own version. What’s more, if an audience feels no emotion when looking at a work of art, it means they have failed to extract a story that resonates with them personally. That is why people say, “That painting doesn’t speak to me.” The viewer feels no story resonating within. Yet this does not mean the artist failed; it simply means that a different audience—at some other time—might be the one to resonate with that story.
The artist can help.
How?
With the caption. A single image can spark a thousand stories for a thousand viewers. Yet, if the creator assigns it a title, or a caption, most of those stories collapse and vanish—much like the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. Only a few remain, and the enigma is quickly resolved.
So, what do I intend to do?
I want to let a story resonate with certain images I see (whether my own or those by other creators) by telling a brief tale in words. I also want to give a title to any image that lacks one, resolving its mystery creatively. The result will be a series of blog posts, all sharing the same title format—”photo-story-words”—but distinguished by a sequential number at the end.
This is the project, and this is number zero.
