The posts from Matt and from Joey Baker remind me of a conversation on the 2008 campaign trail about which I’ve given much thought. During a long downtime, the AP phtographer assigned to the Obama “Whistle-Stop Tour” through Southern PA showed me all the photos he had taken. His editor had told him to get a shot of Obama standing on the bunting-draped caboose–classic Americana, of course. But the train tour was mobbed; good shots were difficult. The AP photographer managed only one caboose picture; however, it captured Obama (partly because of the angle of the shot)in one of those fleeting monments when a person does not look like him/herself. Obama looked sinister. Both the AP guy and I had seen Obama so many times that we knew he never wore that expression. It was one of those moments we have all had when we are captured askew–tongue lolling, wall-eyed, whatever. So the AP photographer did not turn it in and used an interior shot instead. His editor was more than annoyed that he had missed the caboose shot. We talked for a long time about whether he had done the right thing; I agreed that he had. But it was a difficult call.

Here’s the thing. We never give someone a pass on remarks. Any utterance, as opposed to any visual, is significant in some way, even if it is only a slip of the tongue or a mispronounced word. Both are revelatory.

I proffer this story as a way to begin a discussion of the different epistemological contexts visual and verbal provide. (I have another example for video–which raises in my opinion a different problem as “context”–but enough for now.)