Text To Accompany Image - "Contextual Definition and The Passage of Time"

Images can 'speak a thousand words'. But without relevant contextual placement and definition, an image can be completely powerless. It is the additional information that text can lend which can completely redefine an audience's impression, and their subsequent response to the work in question. One such example is this forecourt.

 

Once it is known that this is Mitre Square, where Jack the Ripper famously killed Catherine Eddowes, we can begin to understand the greater context, and therefore the impetus behind the photograph itself. Without this vital contextual information, the image reveals nothing about the true nature of the photographer's intent to show the crime scene as it stands today; and, interestingly, once we know the information around such a scene, we cannot forget it - the photograph is forever tainted by our new-found historical knowledge.
 In addition to this accompaniment, the context in which the photograph is placed is also vital to our initial understanding as to the purpose of the work. For example, if this image were in the window of an estate agent, you would assume that some building of focus in the image was for sale. This assumption is derived from the overall environment in which we assess the photograph, and the pre-defined ideas we have about, for example, the marketing techniques of estate agents and their utilisation of window space.


We have these pre-defined concepts due to the overarching nature of the 'zeitgeist', or 'spirit of the time'. This 
 indicates that previously we may have made other associations which we do not consider to be 'current' simply because they are not this generation's way of thinking. 100 years ago, to socialise one would invite friends and associates to their house for lunch or for an intended purpose; Instead, now we are much more casual - we do not even consider proximity a factor in terms of connecting with someone, due to the rise of such elements as social networking via the Internet; preferring not to even have to leave the house in order to correspond with friends. This is an example of such a change in one facet of the zeitgeist we know.

Images and their meaning may also change, or be lost, over time. 

  

An example of this is Dorothea Lange's photograph 'Migrant Mother' (1936) - without this title, we would not have a clue of its' actual intended purpose.
This photograph was taken at the same time the government in America was pioneering its' Public Works of Art program, and documents a major part of American history mid-Great Depression. It is therefore interesting to see that, as with much photography from before circa. 1970 (American involvement in Vietnam, and the consequential 'Vietnamization' of US Foreign Policy) that there are so few people who are aware of the breadth of its' existence or the range of topics it documented.
It is perhaps foreboding of our own future, wherein all of our current events, our zeitgeist, will fade with time like old photographs.