• Language is a system that offers the capacity to construct thought and give meaning.

• To say we “read” photographs, it to imply there is a visual language to be read.

• Photographs transmit images that claim a direct, unmediated relationship to the external world. These images communicate meaning in ways referred to as “signs.” Such signs may be uncoded (what it is) or coded (what it means). Signs operate as a linguistic system.

•The signs that photographs present are not stable. They can be influenced by context and by the cultural conditioning the viewer brings to understanding what is being seen.

• This potential for open-ended interpretation (limited only by the image itself) suggests the benefits of “anchoring” the image in another language system—that of words.

• These two systems of meaning—the visual and the verbal—can be mutually reinforcing or can work against each other. In either case, text can help to embed the image in an ongoing narrative and reduce the potential for arbitrary or random interpretation.