Certain photography purists insist that text should never mix with photographs, not inside the frame of a photograph, and most certainly not as commentary alongside the photograph. Text is text. Images are images. As I understand it, their reasoning is that if an image can’t speak for itself then it doesn’t deserve our attention. Text is a crutch for second-rate work.
I’m not sure how these purists answer Marshall McLuhan who, in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy, reminds us that text is a visual medium. Font designers understand this, as do layout and advertising designers. But, in the world of photography, text is somehow parasitic to the truly visual.
Obviously, I’m not a purist. I devote an entire website called nouspique to my textual infidelities. Maybe I have loose morals.
As an aside, today’s featured image is an anomaly because it’s black and white. It had no choice because I shot it with black and white Kodak T400 film on my little Yashica rangefinder.
