The Things An Image Can Say

I was really blown away by Bradly Dever Treadaway’s presentation at the International Center for Photography. Last semester in the Shange course, I learned how text creates images and last Monday I learned images can create text! The images by Robert Frank Bradly showed us was a prime example of this. I found the image of the trolley in New Orleans particularly striking because of the way in which a simple, candid shot was able to say so much about the social hierarchies of the time and the linear space in which people lived.

Robert Frank | Trolley — New Orleans (1955)

In addition to enlightening me of the way in which photography is truly an artform, Bradly taught us about the importance of text and image to the history of photography. After Monday’s class, I came away with new understandings of Ntozake Shange as an image-maker in the way she infuses her poetry with movement and she presents words on the page. I drew parallels between Shange and Robert Frank’s work in the way that they both have an improvisational, reactionary quality.

In our discussion about Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava’s work The Sweet Flypaper of Life, I saw the theme of the magical in the mundane from Shange’s work. DeCarava’s photos convey profound messages while still remaining subtle in their subject. The collaboration between Hughes and DeCarava speaks to this as Hughes’ text is a response to the images DeCarava produced. This reminded me of the call and response dynamic in Shange’s work of movement as a response to text and vice versa.  

I also witnessed the value words add to images. For instance, in the collaboration between Shange and the Kamoinge group in The Sweet Breath of Life there is an image of a girl with a poem next to it which begins, “grand lil girl in all her glory.” These words made the image grander as they drew attention to the knowledge and wisdom (often ignored) in girlhood.

Sweet Breath of Life p.1

All in all, my first day at ICP gave me a lot of food for thought for my digital project and gave me a better understanding about the ways in which all the art forms, (photography, music, poetry, and dance) that I have been exposed to through this course thus far, are all interconnected.