Worth a thousand words?

"Pictures Everywhere"
CC BY-2.0 by François Karm. Source: Flickr

A few conversations this week have included the topic of pictures. They’ve been photography as a practice, and as a hobby; from re-touched photos to decorate a living space, to quick cell-phone snapshots to capture a memory.

In this era of digital, when the blurry or insignificant photos can just be deleted, we seem to have put a lower importance to pictures. We can see what they look like immediately (no waiting for the developed prints!), we can adjust the lighting and colouring ourselves, we can add filters and enhancements to the originals, we can even edit people in (or out) with the right software.

Pictures capture our travels, our relationships, our experiences. They honour moments, they remind us of amusements, they catalogue our days. The ones we choose to share tell a story, convey a version of our lives that we wish to project (be that authentic or aspirational – or somewhere in between).

If a picture says a thousand words, then, what do our over-full photo albums have to say about us? What are the emotions that these photos elicit? What characteristics do they portray, what values are they demonstrating?

For we know that the pictures we take show a side of who we are to the world – and sometimes to ourselves. Whether we are in the photo or not, we have participated in the moment: to revisit the picture is to revisit the moment, to both see and be seen. Which gives us the opportunity to consider if we like what we see.

My hope is that we don’t just lose the essence of the captured moment as we are surrounded by the abundance of images. My hope is that we don’t lose ourselves in the plethora of personae we present. And my hope is that we don’t lose sight of what really matters to us, when we are engaged in moments that are worthy of capturing.