What is the purpose of speaking for the photograph–what is an appropriate caption?
A photograph with no caption is left very open. You may not know anything about it–who took it, who the subject is. You may not even know where it’s from. And you take that same photograph, and you add a very minimal caption, maybe just date and location, and it takes on another kind of meaning. Lewis Hine is a good example of this. You take a photograph he might have taken of a boy in a glassworks factory and put under it “This boy is eight years old, goes to work at six a.m., and leaves at eight p.m. He gets paid a dollar a day.” That totally shifts the meaning of the photograph. No longer are you focusing on how beautiful the light is falling on his head. All of a sudden, it is about his condition, and your response to his condition becomes the energy of the image. Documentary photographers wrestle with this all the time. In the classes I teach, I ask my students: “What is it you are trying to communicate and what are the best tools for getting that message across? You have anythin
