More or Less
Getting the picture: when words work well
Text from a talk given by American newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane in 1911 is perhaps the earliest known statement of a well-known saying:
‘Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words’.
I have always loved how a photograph can say so much without words. A photograph can mainline directly into our emotions the way a song or poem can, without us having to use our thinking powers.
Well, now I have discovered firsthand that sometimes more rather than less well-written and arranged words are a necessary accompaniment to a series of photographs.
As a student of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University, I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with a photography student on a narrative photobook. Another editing student and I were designated to work with Noora Ziaei on her book Solana, a story of creation and reclamation. Our job was to make sure the text was up to scratch.
Noora sent through her first pages of photographs and half of the text and asked us to review and rewrite the text as we saw best.
The photographs were stunning; black and white shots of a striking, tattooed young woman with long dreadlocks and intricate jewellery.
The accompanying text was drawn from an interview with the subject, Solana, a ‘Vocal Artist, Sound Healer and Ceremonialist’, who practices and offers healing through her music and ‘Cacao Ceremony’, a ritual process involving cacao as a medicine. She also makes jewellery with spiritual intent, specifically using copper.
Solana grew up caught between two cultures, born of a German mother and a Middle Eastern father. Her story is one of a journey of emergence from societal conditioning toward self-discovery and authentic meaning.
We make sense of things from past experience. I was reminded of this during our editing when my co-editor questioned the use of ‘unlearning’. She was uncertain of the meaning, and felt there might be a clearer word. I knew that ‘unlearning’ is a buzz word commonly used these days with regard to breaking societal conditioning, old patterns and habits and so on, and I suggested it was fine to leave it, as most readers would probably understand it. It’s now part of my co-editor’s experience too.
Solana’s past experiences have contributed to the unique person that she is; they are not common experiences. The images alone are not enough to portray her story to the average viewer.
Some viewers of Noora’s photographs may have familiarity with Cacao Ceremony, or encountered tattoos similar to Solana’s and know their probable meaning. But no viewer except for Solana herself could know what these things mean for her until there were some words of explanation.
Noora sent us the rest of her book as it was, with placement of photographs and text. Photographs of Solana in various situations and settings, for instance in nature, or with her partner, or performing ceremonies. Images of cacao preparation, and jewellery making, and Solana’s tattoos. The text was Solana’s words changed to the third person, in both English and German, and some quotes from poetry.
Noora is clearly a master of visual aesthetics: not only are her photographs of the highest standard, but her arrangements of text and images on the page are visually pleasing, balanced and coherent. I am a lover of white space well used, and Noora uses white space well. The captions for the photographs are long, and sometimes on pages of their own.
Solana’s story is told as much through the text as through the images.
My co-editor and I agreed that the text worked well with the images. It seemed clear that Noora knew what she wanted, and we trusted her artistic vision. Solana was insightful about her life and articulate when explaining things. The text was an effective balance of linear narrative and exposition. We felt that it was important to preserve Solana’s voice, so we restrained our editing, simply polishing and clarifying her words.
Susan Sontag in her essay collection On Photography says, ‘… photographs do not explain; they acknowledge’, and ‘… the truths that can be rendered in a dissociated moment, however significant or decisive, have a narrow relation to the needs of understanding.’
‘The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe’, says John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing. Berger mentions how Magritte’s painting The key of dreams draws attention to this concept.
In an essay titled ‘Revealing the multidimensional mental representations of natural objects underlying human similarity judgements’ (2020), M. N. Hebart writes, ‘In order to … make sense of our environment, we have to constantly compare the input to our senses with the information we have already learned.’
Our photographer’s project is fundamentally a portrait of her subject, Solana.
The text is a key contribution to how the reader might make sense of the images in a rich experience of getting to know and understand the subject.
These images may affect us on their own — we might call them stunningly beautiful, or intriguing, or inspiring — but no matter how moving they are, they would be incomplete without us knowing what Solana is doing and why, where she has come from and what her vision for the future is. As an editor, I now know that less is not always more.
I would like to thank Nora Ziaei for the opportunity to collaborate on her book, and for giving permission to use her photographs in this article. I congratulate her on her creation of a work of such beauty and meaningful essence. I would also like to thank my co-editor Blaise Mulroony for her thoughtful and capable effort.
