Pictures and Print

While my parents were in town this past weekend, we found ourselves out running errands. Since I actually have time to read something besides pages of notes about cholesterol synthesis and degradation, a stop at Barnes and Nobles was a must. After viewing the newest must-haves and surveying the store, I was drawn to the travel section, particularly to the books about local culture. I scanned a few paragraphs about Sneedville's famed Melungeons and then picked up another book about 50 day hikes in Southern Virginia. On the top rack were a number of photography books about Appalachia and the region. Curious, I opened one up to the middle and began looking at the pictures. What I saw astonished me. These pictures of rural Appalachia could have almost been pulled from the landscapes of Central America. In particular, one picture burned an imprint on my mind. It was the inside of a house, if you could call it a house. The walls were constructed of degrading weatherboard painted a soft blue green, like a robin's egg. On them hung icons of the Christ and Mary cradling the infant Jesus surrounding a larger picture, presumably of a loved one. Below the walls sat a simple wrought-iron frame bed with a feather-stuffed mattress. An elderly lady sat in the middle of the bed; squat and stolid in her expression. Simple cotton garments hung from her elderly frame. The lines of poverty had worn deep furrows in her brow, leathery from years of work out in the hot sun. I looked in the back of the book to see when this picture was taken: 1998 and less than fifty miles from where I sit tonight.
In a few brief moments, this book of photographs had given me a deeper and more complete perspective of a culture than any Tennessee history book I studied in grade school ever did. Why is it that a piece of paper with colors and lines formed in the shape of the human countenance evoke such emotion, such thought? Why is it that an image will be forever ingrained in my memory while I can't remember two sentences from a book I read last night?
The photography book inspired me to re-read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a collaborative work by James Agee and Walker Evans. Walker Evans didn't write a single word yet his contribution is just as great, if not greater, as Agee's. Prefacing the four hundred pages that follow are fifty or so photos. With careful study, those fifty photographs unfold the entire story that Agee would become famous for writing.
So why is it "a picture is worth a 1000 words?" Why is it that the written word fails to capture the observed image? Maybe I should refrain from using words and just post pictures to my blog. Below are two images which evoke the same emotion and interest as the photograph of the Appalachian woman. Words aren't sufficient to describe them so I won't even make the attempt. All I can say is their date and location: 2003, Montaña de la Flor, Honduras.



Just some ponderings about pictures and my inability to convey what I see by what I write.