The Role of Photography in Communication

As I began to think about his concept, the cliche, a picture is worth a thousand words, pervaded my thoughts.  How true it is, I thought.  A photograph is able to capture the exact thing that one is able to see.  In essence, it is a moment in time, preserved for the future.  When you show someone a photograph, they can see exactly what you saw without complicated and altered visions created by description.  In this way, I see photography as a very important part of communication, one that needs not use words to get its point across.  A simple photograph can tell a whole story, who was involved, what happened, where, why, etc.  It can communicate someone's thoughts, or emotions, and even create some of one's own.  Photographs allow us to better understand history from the time the camera was invented.  This sheds light on much of how we know what we do about the past.  Often when one thinks about the term communication, the exchange of words comes into mind first.  However, photography can play just as big a role.