Coming to Terms: A creative exploration of the collaboration between photography and literary works

Literature is one of the oldest artistic influences on culture. Today, however, visual images play a growing role in shaping culture, especially in the western world. Images, particularly photography, fill the environments in which we live. They communicate everything from the latest fashion to the most recent development in the war to artistic shots of small town America. These visuals are a part of daily life, but the commonality of photography is a relatively new development when compared to literature. The gradual acceptance of photograph by the literary world allowed it to rise to its status today. Such acceptance enriched the literary and visual worlds through collaborations between authors and photographers. Synergies between literature and photography, such as those between Henry James and A.L. Coburn, John Steinbeck and Dorothea Lange, Susan Sontag and Annie Liebovitz, and James Agee and Walker Evans pushed the boundaries of each medium and allowed for an atmosphere of collaboration between each art. In this project, I argue that neither medium is more influential than the other and show how the two mediums can be used in creative collaboration. The two work together in order to reach their potential for shaping culture in the western world.