The Eye's Mind

In this body of work I am exploring the relationship between visual and verbal thinking. 'What does this picture mean?' is a question I am asked over and over. Trying to explain what a picture means is much harder than paraphrasing a poem and both endeavors usually yield only bits of information. Words and pictures gain authority as soon as they enter books. We live in a culture of words that is becoming more and more visual. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century some books contained illustrations but many of the pictures were masterpieces of verbal misinformation; their creators had only words about the subjects, verbal information handed down for generations that yielded monsters and fabled lands. Other illustrators observed their subjects; vision informed the visual. Most of my books have more pictures than words. A few are tribal books that have left their culture because no one can read them anymore; they are visual now. One of the books that I photographed several times is an internet book that I made so that I could photograph it. Another is a schoolbook that belonged to a boy named Sam. He was trying to write but he could not resist bursting into pictures.