Words
"A picture is worth a thousand words - but which thousand words?"
Anonymous
The Household Encyclopaedia was first published in 1931. Found in many humble homes in the years preceding World War II, this particular copy belonged to my Grandmother. I have no idea if she either consulted it regularly or indeed at all. But this all has little or no relevance to these photographs.
Unable to read them literally how do you read them as images?
Words drift into and out of your field of vision. Cut adrift from context they lose all meaning. And yet the eye is inevitably drawn to them as they exert the mysterious attraction that all words have. Does the eye still yearn to fill in the gaps? To make some sense of half seen phrases?
No matter the missing words you seek would hold little meaning or importance to you today. Still you may seek after them. For what? Information? Most would be irrelevant, some possibly dangerous.
And that only leaves curiosity. Curiosity that can never be satisfied.
The Household Encyclopedia