the power of a picture

Last week I finaly had some time to solve the issue I had with Blogger and the placing of pictures. Doing so, I realized that we live in a world were photographs and pictures are extremely important in the way we communicate. Especially when it comes to showing here at Blogger what we are working on, or how the miniature-endresult of a few nights of enthousiastic work has turned out. But not just Blogger, think about the way we look and how thats percieved. It's a very visual world.




As I was contemplating all of this I had to think about a series that I saw on the BBC (an Englisch TV broadcasting station) a few years ago; "The wonderful world of Albert Kahn" Albert Kahn (1860 - 1940) was a well-off pacifistic banker who realized the power of pictures. He saw it as a way to educate people about the diversety of other cultures, and therefor increase respect for eachother. At that time -we are talking 1903- color photography was invented by the Lumière brothers. By 1907 it was commercialy available. Beeing so fortunated as he was, and recognizing what a huge step forward color was, he then commisioned several photographers to take trips around the world. This action resulted in the biggest archive of early color photographs that still exists today.



The series made a big impact on me, because till then I only knew that world (say the 1910's till 30's) in black and white. Seeing pictures of that era in color made it so much easier for me to identify with what was in them. For example; the lady above is not Mrs Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, but could easily be my aunt in a play of her local theatre company with her own pug dog :-) As luck would have it the BBC decided to publish an accompening book about series.



I have bought it last week, because I feel that pictures have great power.