Typofoto



In the 1920s and 30s design visionaries such as László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and Jan Tschichold, espoused a rigorous sans serif "new typography", the dynamic use of white space and the modernist concept of "typophoto": the graphic integration of type and photographic image.

It is graphic culture, not art, that reflects the mentality and concerns of our time. Graphic expression connects with people because its fundamental purpose is communication.

'The proliferation of images through reproduction also means that they can be accompanied by different kinds of text, which can dramatically change the signification of the image. Text can ask us to look at an image differently. Words can direct our eyes to particular aspects of the image, indeed they can tell us what to see in a picture… It could be said that viewers/consumers of images often choose to read particular meanings into them for emotional and psychological reasons, and to ignore those aspects of an image that may work against this response.'
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practice of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

'The art of visual conversation is aided by a format that encourages speakers seated face-to-face to perform their arguments at length. Such interactive communication calls upon the discernment of an audience that, although absent, is urged to participate as if it were present… Images are not only architectonic, they are iconoclastic in destroying specious certitudes and in revealing ignorance or the limitations of human comprehension.'
Barbara Maria Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images