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The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” seems to suggest that a photograph transcends language, but words have been a key part of many important photographers’ work—from the billboards and signs in many Walker Evans’ photos to Lee Friedlander’s 2019 book, Signs, for example.   The interplay of language and image can create a vivid sense of tension, irony, or poignance. The size and shapes of a font are visual aspects that can carry as much weight as any other aspect in the frame.

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Praxis Gallery presents photographic art that includes written language as a fundamental aspect of the composition, including text in the form of signs or fragments of signs, handwriting scrawled over the photo, graffiti and palimpsests, just to name a few iterations of the theme. Juror | Dallas Crow