Words appear and float through my mind… and then disappear. Photography is obviously a visual medium, but I have noticed that words creep into my images. They always have. Subconscious manifestations or reactions. Found poetry. Found typography. Riddles to be solved. Statements to contemplate. Whispers from someone, unseen. Messages from forces unimaginable. Language, understood. Languages unfamiliar and unknown to me. A confusion of tongues. Contemplating the Tower of Babel.

A photo friend shared an intriguing text written by Frederick Sommer this week. This passage stuck with me:

“Words represent images:
nothing can be said for which there is no image.
Linkages between images exist a priori
and are the logic of display.
Linkages between words are the logic of grammar.
Images can be named; linkages can only be displayed.
Images and their linkages are states of affairs.
Words and their linkages are propositions.
Words occupy language structure as display of grammar:
what can be said can be seen as represented image.”

I often have titles bouncing around in my head. Titles for upcoming books or zines or other projects. I love book titles, sonfg and album titles, names of movies, names of poems. I like to make references through my photo work via titles. Maybe an obscure reference to an obscure indie rock band from the 90s. Maybe an obscure quote from an English poet that I don’t know much about. A line from Dante’s Inferno, a title from a song by The Cure. All fodder for me to play with. To bring context to a series of images. I may be a language charlatan, so sue me.

Here’s a list of titles for works yet to come:

A Year in the Cathedral

Anticipation of a Future Danger

A Century of Slang

Pictures of a Floating World

Status Quo

On The Verge of Mayhem

In Between Days

Broadway the Hard Way

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Travels With Fellini

Lost Summer