The use of the Plato's cave analogy in this weeks 'Picture Stories' lecture to describe the use of television media, is a very relevant one indeed. Picture stories, as we know have been one of the oldest and most basic forms of story telling and information exchange that we know of. From ancient cave drawings to Picasso and Warhol, our human history is riddled with picture stories created for a purpose, to transmit information, ideas and stories. Indigenous and religious histories contain some of the oldest and sometimes most abstract forms of picture stories that we know of, however, these pictures ability to tell 'a thousand words' are often left to the perception of the viewer. Perhaps the greater beauty of these images is not within the image itself, but in whatever it was that inspired these people throughout history to translate an idea into a work of art. Well its a nice thought at least, anyway, back to journalism.
In the year 1860, newspapers were first graced with the presence of images in the form of illustrative line drawings, twenty years later we were rolling with photographs. Images within print media then evolved as the technology surrounding photography progressed until we hit our next major leap in picture story media in 1992. Pictures on the internet. The internet then boomed as a popular image sharing medium and allowed us to instantly view current world events, new discoveries and cats. Cats, man. In 1995 Picture stories evolved online with the massive increase in video equipment popularity, availability and new supportive online mediums such as youtube. The continuing increase in technology and internet usage has continued to shape image use within modern media. Print newspapers once forced to select only the 'best' image for a particular story were then given the ability to publish entire image galleries supporting their online articles and even live stream videos of unfolding events.
I leave you now with a great quote from this weeks lecture that all photographers and serial social networking offenders could benefit from,
"A picture has no meaning at all if it can't tell a story."
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