More Than a Thousand Words

On the symbiotic connection between photography and writing

I like to publish photos with long captions. I like to describe what’s in them, what I see, or what I feel is there. Some say that photos are story-generating conduits in and of themselves; so, in principle, they wouldn’t need a description. A photo is worth a thousand words, an overly abused adage goes. Maybe it’s all an excuse, a way to avoid writing what a photo evokes. A sort of emotional laziness. Or maybe words just don’t come easy.    

But photos create words, and words create photos. Inevitably and naturally. And this bi-directional liaison is the essence of how we identify emotions and give them a shape. It’s a strange process of self-discovery, where we own what surfaces but at the same time are ready to part with it. It’s our gift to the Universe.  

I was just watching Patti Smith recount that when she was little, on her birthday, her mom would take her to Leary’s, a big second-hand bookstore in Philadelphia where birthday kids could get a shopping bag and for a dollar they could fill it up with all the books from the children’s section they could get in there. You’d take your birth certificate with you and show it to them, and they would let you have all that. And Patti says that she would choose books that seemed old or had leather covers or gold stampings or tissue guards. Books by Dickens or early editions of Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio. She still has many of them. A beautiful little story that prompted me to go look for Leary’s bookstore on the web, where I found this old black and white photo.

This photo tells the story of a beloved place that no longer exists. But my aim here is not to tell the story of Leary’s (as fascinating as it is). My aim is letting this photo create words, and letting those words shape emotions. 

On a crisp, blue-skied Saturday morning in Philadelphia, she takes the trolley from Germantown to Center City, where her favorite bookstore on Earth is. In 1949 the world is still awakening from the horrors of WWII and maybe Americans don’t yet fully realize how lucky they are to not have experienced the war first hand, in their homes, like millions of people in Europe did. Constance doesn’t have anything of that on her mind, as concentrated as she is on what she is going to do for the rest of the morning: browsing books at Leary’s. She likes to dress well, have her hair neatly brushed, and put on a veil of makeup, even on a non-work day, even when no one pays attention. Books are Constance’s refuge, a parallel universe where she can abandon herself to be who she can’t be anywhere else. She takes her time, going from shelf to shelf, in deciding on what to devote her next batch of free time to. She’s in her element, among humans with her same passion, and maybe her same dreams and hopes and needs and desires. And emotions and sensitivities. And colors. Her perception of beauty has lately gone from the evident to the hidden. From one that's immediately visible, to the details, the little things. She knows this beautiful metamorphosis will inevitably spill over into her love sphere, making her more demanding. Delicately and discreetly demanding. And she also knows that when the next distinguished gentleman approaches her, as it often happens over books, she won’t be as impressed by good looks and manners as she will be by perceptiveness. 

Photos create words, and words create photos. Infinite words and infinite photos. 

In Why I Write, a marvellous essay, Joan Didion wrote "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means". It seems strange not to know what we’re thinking or looking at until we put words on paper, but that’s exactly what happens. Writing is revelatory. A mysterious, inexplicable process that works like magic. Like taking a photo of our thoughts, giving them shapes and colors, splashing them with light.  

And this same magical process occurs with photos, in the opposite direction. A photo is a unique moment frozen in time, one that will never happen again. When we look at its captured image, it appears different, as if seen with different eyes than the ones who took the shot. Previously unnoticed details and face expressions and light patterns and hues reveal themselves in an observational experience that we wouldn’t have in a live situation. And thoughts and ideas and stories get created.

I like taking photos of people. And I like taking them in the subway or at the train station or at the airport or anywhere humans transit. I think that people make photos unique because they move and think and have ever changing moods and expressions that things don’t have. Things are inanimate and stationary. I like photos with life in them, with breath and heartbeat and motion. Photos that when you look at them you find surprises. Photos that create words and tell stories.   

These photos were taken in London’s tube a few months ago:

There’s something mysteriously enchanting about the places where people transit. They're like a Middle Earth that they have to cross. As if they had to transition from one real life state to another, passing through a finite fragment of unreality. And while they pass through it, they think. And when they do, they make their thoughts visible and audible. And this only happens in this Middle Earth. There’s no other place where human thoughts are visible and audible. By looking at people in transit you can get a glimpse of their existences, their troubles and joys and reckonings and plans. They open them up to you; if you look them in the eyes and pay attention, they make their lives transparent and invite you in. And so you find yourself in this magical dimension where you get fed other existences, where the degree of humanity is highest and most touchable. And you’re humbled by so much life. 

As I’m writing this last paragraph, I’m listening to Tom Waits’ I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You. Such a beauty. And my mind goes back to all the times I’ve stared blankly at the screen in search of a beginning, an incipit to start writing. Or all the times I’ve waited for a story to take form out of a photo. 

When I stare blankly at the screen, thoughts stare back inquisitively. Why are you here, they ask. When I look at a photo waiting for a story to emerge, infinite possible stories wait for me impatiently. What does it do to you, what do you see, they ask. They have a voice, you know. A relaxed, soothing, helpful, yet firm tone of voice. Typical of who wants to transmit confidence in a neutral, detached way. They have a voice, but no shape yet. I can only sense the presence of abstract, formless, amorphous, blurry entities floating around. Waiting for my answers. 

Then answers come, and it all begins. Effortlessly.

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