Duane Micheals
One of the most powerful things that can be done with photography is to combine it with text and/or to create sequences to extend the meaning a single image may be capable of expressing. Duane Michaels, Jeffrey Wolin, and Robert Frank are three photographers who work with both of these elements to varying degrees, sometimes in combination and others times using only one element or the other. Robert Frank's book The Americans is a great example of the potential that sequencing images has for developing complex meanings. A very different approach to sequencing can be seen by Duane Michaels in the work:
Also working with text, this next image is a late Robert Frank one in which he has painted on a mirror within the photograph he made. How does the text change the way we understand the works of Michaels and Frank respectively? Does it change the truth relation we consider so closely associated with photography? Is it more expressive?
In the next set of images by Jeffery Wolin, he has written directly on his photographic prints. Wolin's work addresses human psychology through personal narratives and his penetrating portraiture. In the following images, Jeff has created work about his family, about a community in the town where he lives, and about a large community of holocaust survivors spanning both the U.S. and Europe:
