Monday
Nov232009
civilized ku # 273 ~ words + pictures
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:43AM 
3 vases at the Jay Craft Gallery ~ Jay, NY • click to embiggenHow much would it change your perceptions / feelings about this picture if I changed the title / description to a more complete and accurate description?:
3 vases and an intellectually disabled child on porch swing at the Jay Craft Gallery
Is the picture without the words a "failure" as the pictures-that-need-words-are-failures crowd would have you believe?
Reader Comments (8)
The words add nothing. They just sound pretentious
No words are needed. Recently I stopped putting titles on my images, I may say where it was made and by either me or my wife but that is it.
I'm not sure what the words have to do with the picture. To me the picture is three vases with some stuff, and two people in the background. The person referred to in the words is hardly visible, and seems like they are in the frame by coincidence and not really part of the composition. It looks like a disconnect to me, at best, with or without words.
That title would make me feel like I had a ring in my nose and was being painfully pulled along in a direction I don't want to be going in. Let me steer myself thank you.
It did change my perception. I hadn't noticed the child outside and what under the impression that the woman was looking in or about to look in the window.
Cheers,
Andre
To me the picture is saying something about the passing tourist trade.
The suggested caption is certainly more "precise" but not particularly "accurate" in my view.
How about "Boy on the swing"? I certainly missed him at first glance.
I believe in words. In this particular image they make the difference that was already mentioned, they let me discover the boy, but other than that, it's the kind of title that I don't like.
What I do like, are titles that point to a paradox, a contradiction, that lead me into a trap, vague titles that don't really reveal anything, often rather to the contrary. Surreal titles, one could say.