A few weeks ago, a Dutch newspaper asked me to write a review on a book called The State of the World.
It consists of more than five hundred photographs, all taken by photographers working for the news agency Reuters.
I did write the review, and usually at that point my relationship with the book would have ended. But since I’m traveling in South America the book is always with me—not completely voluntarily I have to admit. The State of the World is so large and it weighs so much that it is impossible to put it in my suitcase.
I decided that the most convenient place for this oversized book was the backseat of my car. Nobody sits there, so I use the backseat for maps, bottles of water, a satellite phone, candy, the occasional wooden animal that I feel obliged to buy from a merchant who won't take no for an answer, and The State of the World.
Quite a few highway policemen and custom officers have noticed this big book in my backseat, but they haven't been very much interested in it. (Actually, against all predictions I haven't had to bribe an official yet.)
But one day, I was stuck in the mud at the border between Paraguay and Argentina. It was raining heavily. And the locals told me and my driver that we had to wait for the rain to stop before we could continue with our trip. It could take hours, days, a week maybe. Nobody knew.
My companion was sleeping or at least trying to sleep, my other books were in my suitcase, and you don’t want to open your suitcase in the mud. You don’t want to be in the mud in the first place. The only thing to kill time with was The State of the World.
The world itself seemed rather far away at this deserted crossing, which was generally used by not more than seven people a week.
Since I had seen the photographs a few times, I concentrated on the captions.
Usually I see the caption for what it is while I'm looking at a photograph in a book or a newspaper. What do you need a caption for? But stuck at the Argentine border, I realized that the opposite is also true.
Sometimes the caption is good enough by itself.
Let me give you an example: "Volunteers pose naked inside Bruge’s Stadsschouwburg Theatre during a photo session with US photographer Spencer Tunick. Tunick has photographed large gatherings of nude people in locations across the world, including New York, London, São Paulo, Caracas and Vienna."
Sometimes the caption is even better than the photograph.