Word-image encounters: ethical dimensions of words for/about/through images

The relation between images and words has been a focal point for scholars from many different disciplines. WTJ Mitchell’s semiotic approaches (1994; 2012) conceptualised this link via the 'imagetext' as synthesis, rather than 'image/text' as rupture. Clive Scott (1999) and Susan Sontag (2004) engaged with it through the written contexts of/next to images, and the impact of writing on one’s ability to comprehend a photograph of violence, respectively. In literary studies, recent scholarship counters the oft-antagonistic understanding of word-image relations. David Kennedy and Richard Meek (2018) proposed a more reciprocal model of ekphrasis that highlights exchanges and encounters. Liliane Louvel (2018) similarly moved away from assessments of dominance and emphasised the collaborative conjunction that produces a 'pictorial third' between reading and seeing. This panel will explore such debates through analyses of the ethics of images vis-à-vis writing.

Whether as seemingly innocuous captions, suggestive titles or full-blown art-historical/theoretical discourses, words next to/around/about/in the work frequently mediate, intensify or otherwise (co-)determine our encounter with images. This power, responsibility and opportunity to 'shape' images carries a significant ethical dimension. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• How do ethical understandings of the re-presentational nature of an artwork rely on written (con)texts?
• How do viewers’ ethical perceptions shift when they become readers of written (con)texts?
• How do we problematise the power dynamics of word-image ethics if the words are not the maker’s?
• How do understandings of word-image relations as symbiotic, antagonistic or neither affect an analysis of ethics?