With partially ironic intent, I’m going to begin this Morning Musings post with two quotations. I snagged from the web by doing a quick search on “quotations about quotations” and, in line with common web practice, I simply present them for what they appear to be — I have not checked to validate the sources. Hey, it’s the internet! ;-)

“In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions

I’ve thought about this quite a bit, largely in the context of the (increasingly?) common practice of attaching quotations to photographs. I think that there are things about this practice that seem useful and beneficial, but there are also some aspects that seem a bit problematic, at least to me, and I’d like to briefly explore this in an entirely incomplete way.

I can call up a few relevant quotations pretty quickly when necessary. Some of you may have seen me post a favorite John Muir quote as a way of acknowledging that I’m heading of into the mountains: The mountains are calling and I must go. I could write at length about what it is in the wild landscape that compels me to return to the mountains, but this little tidbit quickly, efficiently, and beautifully calls up the main idea and many of the presumptions and sensations behind the compulsion. The mountains call. I must go. Associations with Muir himself are evoked. If you share parts of my experience, those words and those concepts quickly call up your own experience and relationship to this subject in a way that is perhaps richer than what I could produce by writing my own words.

There is a long tradition of attaching such quotes to photographs in books of photography. For example, I just pulled off the shelf my old copy of that classic Sierra Club book, “Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada.” There are whole chapters of text in this ground-breaking book, mostly from the diaries of John Muir. In addition, each of the photographs is accompanied by a snippet quoted from the journals, and at their best the quotes suggest a direct and potentially powerful connection between the words and images in which each enhances and strengthens the other. For many viewers, well-chosen quotations encourage them to think more about the meaning and context of the photographs and/or to look more deeply into the photographs themselves.

On the other hand, there are some dangers in attaching quotations to photographs.

There is an old question in some of the arts about the real effect of layering one mode of expression on top of another. Let me use an example from instrumental music. (Vocal music is not part of this discussion, since it typically works in a different way when it comes to extra-musical associations.)

Some music is what has been called absolute music — it speaks to us purely though the native language of musical sound: melody, rhythm, harmony, orchestration, texture, form, etc. It is “pure” music, and “it is what it is.” The musical work speaks and stands purely on the basis of its ability to move listeners through sound. No associations are intended by the composer and the only associations will be those created individually by listeners. This is music that is essentially about itself.

Another sort of music is what is known as program music — music that is intentionally associated by the composer with non-musical elements, often expressing, evoking, or telling a story about something that is actually not in the music itself. The composer intended the association, and the composer lets us know this, either by writing about the piece and its associations or perhaps simply by providing a descriptive title. This is music that is about something beyond the musical sound material itself.

At its best, program music aspires to be even more powerful than absolute music. The argument is that a piece that is powerful as sound alone can be even more powerful when it is also connected to the worlds beyond sound, the worlds of literature, history, folklore, drama, visual arts, and more. However, at its worst, the programmatic connection can seem like a cover-up for music that is not powerful enough to stand on its own — music that would not have moved us on its own absent the (gratuitous) imposition of a non-musical context.

The point of this long digression about music (the field in which I’m academically trained) is that something similar may be going on when attractive quotations are attached to photographs we share online and elsewhere. On one hand, linking beautiful photographs to well-written and powerful text might create an experience more powerful and relevant than either writing or photographs alone. On the other hand, a book of mediocre writing might sell better if some exciting pictures were to be added — or a book of mediocre pictures might sell better if text was added.

Is the quotation relevant to the image and does it make the photograph more powerful than it was without it? Does the quotation help us understand more deeply the inherent qualities and even the message of the image? Or does it actually take us to a place that is not directly related to the photograph? Might it even distract us from the quality of the image itself? Or, in the weakest cases, is it possible that the quotation might cause us to give our attention to a photograph that would not have engaged our interest on the basis of its visual merits alone? Is that a bad thing or a good thing?

What do you think? Should a photograph speak purely in visual terms? Does that addition of a quotation reveal something inherent in the image that we might otherwise miss? Do quotations have the power to make us respond more positively to photographs than we might if we considered the image on its own merits? Do quotations with photographs distract us from the core of what the image itself communicates? Do they sometimes lend more credibility to photographs than they warrant on their own?

(Note: Why the Friedlander photo? It is a visual quote — actually a sort of double quote or double “reflection.” You might have to know a bit about Friedlander and a bit about the photograph in the poster and look at the image closely in order to “get it.” Hint: I’ve also referred to this image as “Looking at Friedlander Looking at Friedlander”)

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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