The Problem With a Picture

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and pictures have been known to capture emotions of their subjects flawlessly. When you travel, you invariably have experiences that you know you are going to want to remember forever, and you try to capture these moments with a photograph. But pictures aren’t perfect. The problem with a picture is that it cannot accurately capture awe. Looking out the window of a train can produce phenomenal scenery. When we traveled through the Alps, the mountains continuously caused me to feel like I was living in a postcard; I felt so small, yet so great. Despite this, I feel as though none of the pictures I took can capture that. The problem with a picture is that it cannot capture the way you, the picture TAKER, feel when it is taken. Both the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and the Holocaust Tower in the Jewish Museum are meant to create feelings of isolation, of despair, of a glimmer of hope that’s just not quite close enough to reach, and both do just that. There was a great sadness in my heart that was painful, but that I never want to forget. But a picture can never truly capture that feeling.  In “The Art of Travel,” Alain Botton suggests instead word-painting, a capturing of image and feeling through analyzing these things. While I have not nearly perfected the art form of word-painting, I think it is in interesting solution to the picture problem.