Typography Photography

The age-old adage tells us that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about a picture with words of its own? Here at Nature Links, we’ve been working with our art teacher, Hilary Tobin of Island Meadow Arts on a project that blends typography and photography in order to tell stories, make viewers think, or give each other a laugh through the use of images and words. While we’re all witness to the use of words and images together in the form of advertising, memes, and social media posts, a lot of work goes into creating an image and writing text to go with it. Nature Links participants learned so much through this project about proper lighting for photographs, framing their subject, and how to caption a photo to make it either humorous, interesting, silly, or informative.

We began by looking at great examples of typography-photography such as the work of Jenny Holzer. The New York-based artist is known for large-scale displays of thought-provoking text in public spaces. The words she uses can be uncomfortable and even confusing, but displayed in a public space, the viewer has no choice but to confront the text and consider what it means. Another artist, Barbara Kruger, uses black and white images collaged with text to encourage her viewers to think about how advertising and media can impact us. After viewing both artists’ work and analyzing their meanings, we set off to create our own photographs!

The work you see below is the result of many weeks of hard work from Nature Links participants. They each went out to photograph things in and around their homes and presented their work in order to get feedback from each other. In many photographs, Nature Links participants helped give each other ideas about what text to add and even what type of font each should contain. I hope you enjoy the work of our Nature Links typography-photography artists. And perhaps you’ll be inspired to create your own images merging photos and text.