Images and Words.

I am sure that the mail about this picture(and a few more in the series) has reached most of our mailboxes. And as is the trend now, any mail with even a mildly interesting fable will shuttle across the information highway till it reaches the point where we send it to trash at the look of its subject line.

Now the first time I got the mail, it had more of a chronological labelling of the events(genuine or gyan) shown through a series of snap-shots. Keeping aside the statistical jabber, the conclusion drawn from the series was highly subjective.

1. The passion called photography.
2. Insanely stupid acts people do without getting high.
3. Amazing photoshop-ing.

Now as expected, the mail hit me the second time in the day. But this time I noticed a difference. Below the usual series of the images, there is an apparently inspiring one-liner on the lines of "The will to do is the greatest. Believe in yourself." Some enlightened soul has decided to do justice to the images and replaced the descriptive jargon with some fodder for thought.

And fodder for thought it is. It has lead me thinking that is it that necessary to molest a picture's pristine complexity by drawing a definitive conclusion out of it? Doesn't that completely disregard the viewer's independence of open interpretation?

Chronological or sequential descriptions are a different story altogether as they are written to serve a different purpose, from a photo-journo point of view. But I find this dogmatic approach towards viewing photographs utterly retarded. I fear the day when Taj Mahal or the Everest would have to come with a billboard that reads "Dangerous Beauty" or "The Power of Love". Why does everything in life has to come with a punchline?

Let the images be their own words. Let them speak, make them free.