The CAPTION
A probe into the birth and use of text
to make meaning of photographs and
its revolution in recent times
R. Dhanya
Probably the easiest to go without captions are landscapes or images of ‘natural
beauty’. How often have we seen the Yosemite peaks pasted onto walls without the
slightest idea of where this mountain was or what it was called? The most recent
example is the Windows XP wallpaper by name ‘Bliss’. Being touted the most
seen photograph ever in the world we now know that this green valley with white
cotton clouds is in fact a photograph by American photographer Charles O’Rear
of Sonoma County in California.
The same rule goes for images of women. Photographs of ‘beautiful’ women
have transgressed borders and contexts to become well known, idealised icons
with no names. The quintessential Hindu woman holding her palms together in
a gesture of welcome (Namaste) or centre-fold raunchy images of foreign women
models on bikes and cars are examples.
Captions are needed when the image crosses the realm of the aesthetic
and enters the more indiscernible area of knowledge. Walter Benjamin loved
photography for this very same reason. The lack of ‘aura’.
While Benjamin proclaims the loss of aura (but he mentions the one place
you still find it- portraits of loved ones and the deceased) as the most defining
characteristic of the photograph and its ability to multiply into any numbers,
Roland Barthes speaks of his favourite photographs as images that tug his ‘feelings’.
He even refuses to print the one image of his mother (where he managed to ‘find’
her) that he found amongst many others since it wouldn’t mean anything to the
reader. On one side photographs are likened to crime scenes and on the other to
deeply personal pictorial souvenirs.