Are the 1000 Words Associated with Pictures True?

           Morris notes in his article, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire”, that the relationship between images and beliefs are completely changed when there is a caption versus not having a caption. Without a caption on the image there is so much room for interpretation. For example, when I looked at the image of the ship with no caption in Morris’s article, I really had no feelings about it. It was just another ship, I thought it was possibly the Titanic but was not sure. But, when he added the caption The Lusitania and put a description to it, the meaning completely changed to me. Now this was not just another ship but it was one of the reasons that we entered WWI. I now felt a sense of compassion and sadness when looking at this photo. My beliefs changed entirely when just a simple caption was added to the photo.

            I have had personal experiences when dealing with photos with no captions. When I was around 14 years old my family had a bunch of photos that we had not put into albums yet. They were photos of my brother, sister, and I. There was a separate pile of photos for each of us so we knew which were the ones of ourselves. I spent a lot of time looking through the photos of my young childhood because I could not remember a lot it. The photos were a way of recreating the memories for me. But, as I found out a few years later when we made the albums, almost half of the photos in my pile were of my brother and not me. I had no idea of this. For almost two years I was looking at photos of by brother and thinking that the activities he was doing was me.

            In reading the New York Times after reading Morris’s article, I came across an article that was about $50,000,000 worth of diamonds being stolen from an airport when it was being loaded onto a plane. Because I had just read Morris’s article I looked at the picture before reading the article and it just looked like men putting up a barrier along an already existing fence. After reading the article and looking back at the image I felt more of a connection with the picture. The article explained how armed men disguised as police officers drove onto the tarmac armed to a teeth and stole the diamonds. Luckily no one was hurt but now when I look back at the image of the men building the barrier, I see the purpose behind it. I understand the need for the barrier (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/world/europe/thieves-steal-millions-in-diamonds-at-brussels-airport.html?hp&_r=0).

            With out a caption or previous knowledge a picture can be just as informative as it is uninformative. It can miss lead you, like in the picture of the Lusitania, or it can not tell you the whole story, like in the picture of the men building a barrier. I believe that without captions or text to go along with pictures, the meaning should only be loosely understood.