[Leica] Captions

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

"Strongly disagree. A caption can add to a picture as well as giving the

who, what, where.... How the blazes can one "Untitled" picture be

remembered against the visual sea of other "Untitled" pictures."


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I don't know about photo books but in evaluating art works the caption
establishes the mind set of the juror. I have seen mediocre paintings juried
into art shows because of a clever caption while objectively better works
were rejected because of poor or missing captions. Probably the worst are
generic descriptive captions such as "Flowers" or "Portrait." No matter how
good the painting, the juror mentally classifies it as old ladies art. The
best captions make an art show visitor seek out the painting from the show
program. We are so inundated by images that even the strongest needs a
little verbal help. For newspapers or magazines the issue is moot. The
pictures are adjuncts to the story. The author's byline is usually set in
larger type than the photographers.

Larry Z