Research - Talking Pictures

While in an ideal world I'd be featuring more well known photographers or work I'd found in Portfolio or magazines/websites with critical reviews, I've been struggling with this project. I've had to really look around and most of what I'm finding is by smaller or new artists.

In this case, this is an online photography blog called "mental_floss" and they have a section called 'Talking pictures' which is found images with writing on them. A clever idea which they often sort via different categories. The one I came across was on a design blog and looked at the troubles ones, trying to put our own problems into perspective.



The great thing about the project is that the found images are so subjective. They were what that person wanted to photograph or how someone else wanted their subject to be done so. The text is obviously written on by them and so only discloses what they wish. It's that openness and the sense of not knowing the full story that make such projects hold an audience.


I think secretly everyone has a natural curiosity to know about other people and to know what it is that makes them tick. This project and anything that explore identity or personality offers this gateway and the opportunity to satisfy that curious urge. Being a human seems to be about belonging and not feeling alone and people are constantly searching for things they can relate to. Any project that deals with people and identity gives us an opportunity to engage with someone, through an installation, photograph or piece of text and know we aren't the only ones feeling that way or thinking in a certain way. It's a sense of belonging and of feeling like you fit in. I think secretly everyone strives for that and this type of project offers that as well as being an interesting insight into humans, the ways things were in this case as most of these images are from times we can't relate to these days, not as a younger generation anyway.