Very very rough draft, fixing in progress
Photographs can be more powerful than text BecuSe they provide visual cues and can be altered in ways so that the photograph conveys the message the photographer wants it to convey. They can do this by adjusting contrast and colour to induce emotions whithin the audience. (Black can be associated with seriousness, power etc). However written work such as Kathryn Stocketts can be equally powerful as they are written in words that people can fully understand. They describe the exact emotions (which are open for interpretations for the readers) and events the writer wants to tell. Photographs do not come with words and it can often be somewhat difficult to understand the whole situation in the photograph unless you are provided with a backstory or additional information.
Additionally, Gordon parks’ photographs portrays real life people who were alive at that time, and also real events. Although the truth in the past could have been altered to an extent due to how parks captured the moments, it still is real evidence about the past . This makes his work powerful because they are more realistic than The help, which is fiction. The book contains made up characters that goes through various fictional challenges, which sometimes allude to real life events/ objects.
However because the help is written with shifting points of views (first person) of each characters, the help may have been more relatable than Gordon parks photographs therefore more powerful. We see Gordon parks work as something that is from the past, something that happened some time ago. I personally did not feel a emotional connection to the people in the photographs as it felt more like a visual source for history that reports and remembers segregation in the US than something I should feel connected to. The reason behind this is probably because I have never lived in the US or engaged with their history, hence I do not feel a connection when I came across the pictures in class. What I saw was a time in history and something that should never be forgotten.
Whereas for the help, it was easy for me to engage and be sympathetic towards the women in the book, as their emotions were explicitly written and I knew the backstory behind them. Although I have never experienced this he form of segregation written in the book, I felt that I was able to sympathize with their anger, sadness and other human emotions described by Stockett.
It is hard to determine which is more powerful, as they are both powerful in their own way. whether that is to be impactful by showing the real life situations or to invoke emotions within us and make the readers read the progress and development each characters went through.
