Logophobia

I have banished all actual words from recent work, even in places where it would naturally appear in the image, something which became a virtual monomania with the WIP 'Ozymandias', as pictorial signs took the place of labels and names.

Wordless story-telling has its own tradition, from Lynd Ward to Eric Drooker. Everything has to be shown by the image, not told by the text. Every mediocre piece of fiction will tell the reader the story, rather than giving them the experience of the events. Having words within my images, in speech bubbles or captions, feels like a cheat, a cop-out, a failure to trust the image.

But Goya's integral titles to Los Caprichos show that text can be used in juxtaposition to image, not to explain the image, but to problematise or jolt the image into a more complex frame.

Words have been my professional stock-in-trade for three decades. I know too many of them and too much about them to believe they are a transparent tool for communication. Words always, in some form or manner, seek to persuade the reader or listener, of the truth of a description or argument or narrative. An image without a slogan to accompany it can, I think, claim no such authority for itself. Its manner of persuasion does not employ the means by which opinions are articulated, laws are passed, sentences handed down.

So I am still strongly disinclined to incorporate verbiage at any point within the image. Even one word absurd labels contains and captures the image beyond anything I would wish to happen.