Member of the Royal
Newfoundland Regiment.
(PANL A11-153)

Why Photographs?

We often say a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps we mean there's a lot to see in them. Photographs capture scenes, moods, relationships, places, moments snatched out of time. They freeze time in ways that time itself does not allow. Maybe that's why people are drawn to taking photo- graphs, to keeping them and looking at them long after they are taken. The very aspects of photographs that draw us to look at them are also the elements that make photographs good stimuli for writing.

Stuck with Blank Paper and Nothing to Write?

Unfortunately, this is often what happens when a person is encouraged to write. The mind crowds with multiple possibilities, then goes blank. The blank paper sits there like a reproach. There are a host of things that can keep us from "just writing" - including thinking we have to have a "topic," thinking we have "nothing to say," expecting to begin and continue in perfect sentences, criticizing ourselves and fearing the criticism and scrutiny of others. All of these are elements of "writers' block." Even professional writers experience it; it's not surprising that beginning writers experience it a lot. The challenge of becoming comfortable as a writer is recognizing this block for the common, temporary thing it is, and finding ways around it.

The Photo as Jumping-Off Point

Photographs can be great jumping-off points for writing. They give us detours around writers' block. A photo in front of a writer is packed with ready images, and all really good writing is image-based. Any good photo will have a focal point - a feature or figure or face - that draws the eye and asks for a response. In this way, photographs get the writer moving beyond questions of subject or topic or "something to say."

Photographs also hold within them the possibility of surprise. While some writers are surprised to find they stimulate content at all, others are surprised to be led in new directions. Some writers are always writing the same story, or focusing narrowly on one thing. The photograph may take a writer beyond this, and into new places. A writer may look at a photograph and recognize something of the self, of one's own story. But a photo can also prompt a writer to step outside the confines of his or her own skin, into expanded identification, empathy, a sense of the larger world.

If the writing instructor or workshop leader says, "just look at the photograph in front of you and write what comes to mind," the writer can feel free to write associations, images, random notes, bits of story, ideas, all of which are somehow stimulated by the photograph. It is in itself the unifying thing, and it's right in front of the writer with all its possibilities. Many writers are pleasantly surprised by where this kind of writing "takes them." But in order to get there, they have to first feel free to take off.

Woman at Sheshatshiu.
(CNS Monsignor E.J. O'Brien Collection)