The power of word and image

The Daily Mail in 1896 became the first newspaper to combine the photographic image with that of the written language. The then innovative mixture of words and pictures, has over subsequent generations, become a familiar part of our cultural landscape.
I can't be without either.

There is an on-going debate about words and whether they actually exist. 
The argument is that the human brain sees them as a series of letter images. Over time we develop a library of rounded corners, horizontal and vertical lines and then mentally, match the features of what we are currently reading with those we have collected from the past.
The sequence gives us the word. 

Letter image or word, what amazes me is how much original material has survived from so long ago. Documents of considerable cultural, historical and political importance, such as the Magna Carta, the Book of Kells, the Declaration of Independence remain intact, and are priceless.  Whilst letters and diaries by key figures as well as ordinary people speak volumes about the issues and social conditions of the day. 

Technological innovation has played an important part in preserving the richness and diversity of our heritage. Without it much would have been lost. Shakespeare has much to thank Gutenberg for. Hardly any of his hand-written documents survive. Gutenberg's press undoubtedly contributed to Shakespeare's global standing as a literary superstar.

For They Shall Not Grow Old, New Zealand Director Peter Jackson, painstakingly restored silent film footage, turned black and white into colour and made life on the front during WW1 a very real and human affair.  

American filmmaker Ken Burns, is renowned for his documentary film work. During the nineties, the BBC showed his award-winning series The American Civil War. For some reason it was aired at midnight on Saturday evenings. The solution was to tape it and then watch it first thing Sunday morning. Eventually we bought the boxed set. A nine-part series, Burns uses contemporary cinematography in addition to thousands of archival photographs, paintings, letters, diaries, film and newspaper images set to music to teach people about the American Civil War. It took five years to produce.

Burns's latest documentary is an 18 hour,10 disc DVD about the Vietnam war. With his long-term collaborator, Lynn Novick, Vietnam took over ten years to make and is a masterclass in documentary film making. I've just finished watching it. 

A massive canvas, this isn't purely boom and bang. Instead, Burns uses his trusted archival style of image, word and music to explore the tumultous arena of American politics and the global unrest that engulfed the Vietnam war. There are interviews with witnesses - Americans who fought, CIA agents, Vietnamese combatants, civilians from the North and the South, journalists, family members.  

Vietnam provides a ground-up view of the every day, and the people who lived through it, 
as well as the stories of some who did not. It is complex. Ken Burns triumph is that his careful use of words and images have made it immediately understandable and powerfully unforgettable.