When is a Photo Worth a Thousand Words?
As photovoice participants share their stories with one another, photographs help them to explain their experiences and ideas. This is particularly useful when participants are unfamiliar with one another’s way of life, a circumstance which sometimes needs a certain amount of translation. In quite a few cases, our Muslim participants were immigrants for whom English is not their first language. While these newer citizens’ ability to speak was typically quite fluent, the ears of native English speakers were not always accustomed to their accents. The opposite was also likely a factor as communication flowed in the other direction: native English speakers may not have realized that they were speaking too quickly or used the idioms, slang, or jargon of cultural and religious insiders. Even in cases where cultural and linguistic barriers may have been minimal, some ideas can be challenging to communicate.
The story behind Emma’s photograph of a flooded street in Fredericton (New Brunswick, Canada), for example, is not immediately evident. Floodwaters fill the street and seem to be inching up the doorstep of a church in the foreground. Left to one’s own imagination, someone could read their own meanings into the photo. Could this be a metaphor for the foundations of religion being eroded by secular cultural flood waters? From the photograph, we simply don’t know. It is only when Emma’s voice enters into the conversation that we can see more clearly.
Photo 1. Emma used a photo of flooded streets to explore the divides among Christian denominations.
When one looks more closely at the details of Emma’s photograph, another church building down the street comes into view. It turns out that Emma wanted to explore the challenge of denominational differences. As the caption to her photo reveals, “There are many different Christian denominations and sometimes it’s hard to cross the divide.” The photo, then, operates as a visual simile. In Emma’s experience, the divisions between Christian denominations are like this flooded street: disruptive, difficult to cross, perplexing, damaging, and perhaps the result of poor engineering—or at the very least the unintended consequence of an otherwise well-conceived plan. Her photograph carries emotional and conceptual freight that help her to convey the challenge of navigating denominational differences.
Seeing Emma’s photograph through the eyes of Ahmad, a Muslim participant, provides an opportunity to consider what the image accomplished during a photovoice meeting:
It’s amazing because it shows you what exactly, like—photos talk. . . . Like, it shows you what’s the idea, you know what I mean? So, for example, the photos that . . . Emma brought, it shows me—like for example the photo between the churches and the water, it’s like, it means a lot, you can really understand it, like you feel it’s talking . . . . I feel it’s better than just writing down and people explaining, like when you put the picture and explain about it a little bit, it’s more understandable, you know what I mean?
In Ahmad’s words, “photos talk.” They can help a participant to describe their experiences or explain their thoughts. A photograph of a flooded street separating congregations carries a kind of emotional force that may otherwise be missed or difficult to convey in a conversation without the image. More than just a thoughtful photo of life complicated by flooded streets, this photograph really struck home because these were the participants’ streets. Looking at Emma’s photo evoked strong memories of recent and severe flooding that was incredibly disruptive to the lives of her conversation partners.
“A photograph is worth a thousand words” is an adage I frequently hear. Most people will nod in agreement when someone else invokes this generally accepted maxim. Photos by themselves, however, may not communicate what the photographer intends. Emma’s photo is a good example. Without her explanation, it is difficult to appreciate what she wants to say. It is only when we talk about photos that they become useful to convey meaning, which is what I think people mean when they say, “A photo is worth a thousand words.” Photovoice teaches us that photographs are more valuable—worth 1000 words—when they convey someone’s intended meaning.
Activity 6: Are your photos worth a thousand words?
Emma’s photograph is a wonderful combination of intent and opportunity. While she may have been able to find other ways to convey the message of divisions within Christianity, she took advantage of local circumstances that would have resonated with her conversation partners. There was a recent flood and everyone in town would have been familiar with this experience. As such, the photograph carried quite a bit of meaning that could help people see and feel what Emma wanted to communicate.
How about your photographs, are they worth a thousand words? Do they help to communicate meaning in ways similar to Emma’s photo? Spend time this week thinking about the photos you have composed up to this point in your Interfaith Photovoice experiment. Think critically about them. How useful are they in capturing or conveying the narrative you have in mind? If you were to photograph the same theme or idea, what would you do differently in order to leverage photography’s ability to tell a story? The next time you meet with your interfaith co-conspirator, share your insights with one another. Offer each other feedback about how to improve as a visual storyteller.