I mitt inlägg om helgens vernissager, och kommentarerna till det, pratas det en del om vad bilder i sig kan berätta. Följande träffande rader läser jag nu i The Photographer's Eye av John Szarkowski, en bok jag hittade på Moderna när jag var i Sthlm senast:

The decline of narrative painting in the past century has been ascribed in large part to the rise of photography, which "relieved" the painter of the necessity of story telling. This is curious, since photography has never been successful at narrative. It has in fact seldom attempted it. [...]
The heroic documentation of the American Civil War by the Brady group, and the incomparably larger photographic record of Second World War, have this in common: neither explained, without extensive captioning, what was happening. The function of these pictures was not to make the story clear, it was to make it real. (min kursivering)