A picture is worth a thousand words.
Old, inaccurate saying.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, why write? Because it isn't really true. Pictures often raise more questions than they answer. Take this, for example:

At first sight, you have a number of questions: does that woman find the bananas satisfactory? Is the salesman asking a fair price? What kind of patter is he using? Is he claiming the bananas are special in some way? What about that guy who's looking at the camera? Is he the woman's son, and is he mad that somebody's taking his mom's picture? Or, maybe, he's on the run, and doesn't want to be recognised? A lot of possibilities spring to mind.

The Library of Congress is no earthly use here. The title of this picture is, 'Early banana importers and distributers were mostly Italian immigrants.' Thank you so much. The date is 'circa 1900' and the description reads, 'People selecting bananas from a cart at an open-air market.' And of course we know that bananas, a new product, were a hot item in the US at that time. But the rest of it is up to our imaginations…

One picture, a thousand words. What could you make out of that picture? An essay on economics and fruit imports? A mystery tale? A romance? A comedy involving banana peels?

Tell you what: have a go. Prove those photographers wrong. A picture isn't worth a thousand words – except in the sense that it inspires a thousand words of good storytelling.

Stick your prose in an A-space, and link to it at the bottom of this page. I dare ya. (You can also use it as one of your daily posts for NaJoPoMo.)

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

09.11.15 Front Page

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