They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which is a relatively easy currency to convert, because it's roughly the same as a dollars to won. Still, part of me can't help wondering if the saying should be modified to adjust for inflation.

I know why the saying originated, because I've experienced it. For the one hundredth anniversary of National Geographic, they published an article called One Hundred Years of Photos. In the article, they had a picture of a dying Nigerian boy on a mat in a Red Cross camp during the Biafran War. When I saw that picture, I felt pangs of hunger in my stomach, and felt an echo of each of the boy's bony ribs inside my own ribs. Even though I haven't seen the picture in years and years, I can still close my eyes and see his protruding shoulder blades. The picture told a story a hundred times more powerful than any facts or statistics ever could.

My problem with the saying comes from the fact that not every picture is nearly as meaningful as that particular shot, and some words are more meaningful than others. I'll ignore right now the obvious arguments about the world-shaking words of history's Jesus's and Hitlers, and focus on a few words that are particularly inspiring to me. “Tintinnabulations” is one of my particular favorites, because the dictionary definition is “the tinkling sound of bells,” which is exactly what the word sounds like. Other words that sound so apt to there definition are “hullabaloo* – which means (and sounds like) a big uproar—and putz—someone who bungles things up. So when we say “A picture is worth a thousand words,” that exchange rates varies not only on each picture, but also on the words that are used!

Another problem with the currency of words to images is that one cultures images are worth more words, or different words in that culture than they are in a different culture. A Mona Lisa which might be worth a thousand words in Western culture might be worth only one hundred, or even one in Papua New Guinea or Afghanistan. Now, granted exchange rates change from country to country already. A dollar which is worth a thousand won in South Korea is worth roughly 86 Pakistani rupees and roughly 13 Mexican pesos. The real problems arise in the fact that even within a country, the subjectivity of a single image. For example, this picture of my brother Josiah speaks infinite words to me, but to someone outside of the family, the picture would mean very little. Imagine going to a country where the price of something changes drastically from store to store. At one stop you have to pay fifty cents for a gallon of milk, but at the next stop the charge is fifty dollars! Clearly images and words are not comparable currencies!

(Incidentally, the inverse is true that certain words have more power in certain cultures, and even then the power of those words varies contextually from person to person.)

What then, should the adage be? “A picture is worth a thousand words...depending on the picture...and the words...and the person.”

*Webster's dictionary provides a list of synonyms for hullabaloo which delight and tickle the mind in the same sort of way; “ballyhoo,” “hubbub,” and “kerfuffle” are three of my personal favorites.

**Photo courtesy of Neil Das, circa Resurrection Barbeque 2006 :)