A Thousand Words
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
To begin with the famous and perhaps clichéd maxim, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, is often reiterated ad nauseam, for countless images of meagre sentimental value. It is only natural for us- as the trivial humans that we are- to place things in boxes, to categorise and bring seemingly inordinate array of items/ themes/ narratives into some coherent fashion. Perhaps this makes us make sense of the world. After all, in a world where things followed no course would be like a ship without a sail (not to mention counter-evolutionary – when you are being chased by a predatory cat you need to make quick decisions). I would hazard a guess to say it would be a sense of ‘meaninglessness’ that would be forever enduring, if we never categorised anything. That’s not so bad, right?
I’ll leave you to ponder that one.
This brings me if I may, onto the subject of photography. Opening this little Pandora’s Box circa 2007 (admittedly I’m a newbie to this art); I found a new way of expressing myself creatively like many other hobbyists discover. It was on holiday to South East Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) that I found myself thinking ‘in pictures’. Strangely you see mundane moments of human interaction transform though a lens. Things that we all have: faces, hands and feet convey much more when one can take away the distractions of race, class and creed. Things that are undeniably human: assurance, love, solidarity and aloneness. It’s also things we don’t notice, things that we dismiss at a glance not taking in the ‘beauty’ of all things not only great, but also so small that it would make ant wonder.
I would very much like to ask my readers what their opinions are of the following pictures, how it makes them feel; first impressions, likes- dislikes, their reactions, thoughts and feelings. I will follow with my own feelings on them after a couple comments, there are also more on the flickr link below.
