Is a picture really worth a thousand words?

Literally, of course not. If pictures were sold according to how many words a person can write about it, no one would buy pictures. We often hear people uttering this popular phrase but there are still those who underestimate the true power of the photograph. My question for those who doubt a pictures worthiness is simply "why?"

Pictures can stimulate the reader's interest and curiosity in a topic (Nickerson in Schriver 1997). People also tend to remember pictures better than words (Shepard in Schriver 1997). Swedish research on broadcast news shows that although the audience prefers as much "live footage" as possible, still photographs can impact the audience just the same (Findahl et. al in Schriver 1997).

In The Power of the photograph, Sonja Heizman reports of a gallery dedicated to war photography in Dubrovnik. Those who witnessed the photographs in the gallery were clearly moved by the effects of war.

A child crying for his mother following the American bombardment of Inchon, Korea.
(Source: Flickr)

Photographs used to accompany other texts as pictures can overwhelm the prose presented, shifting the attention to the picture (Schriver 1997). Now, some rather let the pictures tell the story (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).

In the media report (2007), Wade Goddard, the war gallery owner, claims to trust photographers more as the pictures they captured exemplified the situation of war rather than journalists, who through their editors, write stories at an angle and might have a bias towards the news story.

Goddard should not be quick to trust people. In 2007, a Reuters photographer stirred controversy by altering photographs he had taken to publish through Reuters. He had used Adobe Photoshop to digitally alter elements in his photos to worsen the appearance of a situation.

A before (left) and after (right) comparison of a photo taken by former Reuters photographer, Adnan Hajj.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Images are truly powerful. Its ability to influence and alter perceptions is tremendous. Imagine if more digitally altered pictures were published; it would distort the reality that photographs are known to represent. The Lebanon war would have been represented as a far worse situation than it is. Ultimately, this matter is simply unethical.

References:
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, TV 2006, ‘The semiotic landscape’ in Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.

Schriver, KA 1997, ‘Chapter 6: The interplay of words and pictures’ in Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, Willy Computer Publishing, New York.

The Media Report 2007, ‘The power of the photograph’, audio recording, ABC Radio National, 4 October, viewed 5 November 2008, [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/index/date2007.htm].