:: Images marry words in blogs ::

A few years ago, when I first started blogging here, I posted a few entries about how the blogging medium was strikingly word-centric. At the time, it was rare to find photos or images on people's blogs and I remember thinking that this pointed to a certain primacy of textual meaning over visual.

I've since had people criticize me for this view, by pointing out that text is visual. My argument was (and I guess still is) that the visual isn't the same - words still leave more room for imagination, interpretation, individual choice. Photos and images are so framed by their takers that they are easier to use to exclude or contain meaning, rendering the viewer of them more passive in their possibilities for interpretation.

(If you've ever seen photos of me, you'd know what I mean - In pics, I always look pasty, dull, fat, even somewhat vapid...not words most people who know me in the meatworld would use...)

But with the rise of systems like Flickr and Hello and the ascension of a whole new kind of blogging called photoblogging, what does this new wave and new style of blogging do to my argument now?