A short little post to celebrate a short little line of poetry found everywhere in Japan. 写真はイメージです。You can find “写真はイメージです。” written on a package of yoghurt, on menus at restaurants, in magazines and on advertisement boards just to name a small selection of places where you can enjoy the simple but beautiful sentence stating something almost too obvious. This photo is an image.
The reason behind this sentence, as I understand it, is to inform customers that the photo or picture they are looking at is not an exact representation of what the customer will get. Maybe the color of the food is a bit different, maybe the coffee is served in a cup that is not the same as in the picture, maybe the scenery seen in the travel photo will not be the same as tourists see when they get to the destination. It is basically a sentence printed in order to avoid claims from disappointed customers who get something different from what they thought they bought or ordered.
As for me however, after reading it, I always start to wonder about the literal meaning of this – what photos are not images? Can I find a deeper truth behind the obvious? I like to look at it as some kind of modern art and it makes me think of the Belgian artist René Magritte and his painting of a pipe with the text this is not a pipe written in French. I think I need to talk to my son about this, maybe he has some insight that can enlighten me.
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