Caption This: A Photographic Collection of Amusing Comments, Snarky Asides, and Romantic Admissions

(Hardback)

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Description

A celebration of a century of personal photo captions in all their forms, themes, and voices.

Whether it's scripted words in pencil scrawled below an old Polaroid, or a pithy caption on a social media photo today, we've all felt a pull to the words and sentences that describe the pictures and moments in time of our lives... In this delightful collection of surprising, funny, and poignant photographs from over the past century, Caption This celebrates the captivating (and often contradictory) relationship between what we see and what we say.

Through 150 color and black & white photographs of everyday people dating back to the early twentieth century, this book reveals - in nine thematic chapters (This is me grooving; This is my snarky side; This is me in love, for example) - the funny and surprising history of comments their handwritten or typed captions have inspired, with the candidness of Awkward Family Photos and the "confessional intimacy" of PostSecret.

Reviews

"This book contains some of the best writing on photographs--literally on photographs! The intimate inscriptions found on snapshots gathered here convey photography's promise: the shared pleasures of viewing and naming everyday epiphanies."
--Brian Wallis, Executive Director, Center for Photography at Woodstock

Author Bio

Barbara Levine and Paige Ramey are collectors, artists, and curators specializing in vernacular photography. Their photography collection known as PhotoMania was recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and their collection of vintage photograph albums was acquired by the International Center of Photography in New York. They run Project B, an archive and collaborative curatorial venture. They live in San Miguel, Mexico.