In the end, I still cannot disentangle both art forms. If fifteen years ago I might have been really partial to the literature side (even a bit dogmatically dismissing visual arts as a lesser form of expression), my late re-discovery of painting and photography has now reinforced my initial belief: written art is not an endangered species!

Something else changed since my high school essay: Internet became part of our lives. Its adoption by the masses put back personal expression on the front scene. This expression is organic, prolific and protean: text, pictures, music. What a dull website if little or no illustration! What a confusing one if there’s no story/substance behind! Take Flickr for example: a simple solution to share pictures with the option of adding stories, tags, interaction without much pain.

So here I stand today, two-faced: a side deeply fond of the act of writing (and even more with an actual pen and paper); another one experiencing and enjoying more and more the visual universe! Words or Images? Like a spoiled child, I don’t want to choose: let me have WORDS AND IMAGES!
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Some further material:
[1] Wikipedia – The history of writing.
[2] Literacy in the Information Age: Final Report of the International Adult Literacy Survey, OECD 2000. PDF
[3] All about the Sunflowers (on Botanical.com)
[4] All about Walt Disney’s Snow White
[5] Flickr
[6] A nice article on the influence of internet on our cultural behavior

Note: You can also just use google (or your preferred search engine), wikipedia, ... to start a never-ending journey on those subjects. The links above are just some personal picks I found when writing that essay.

Thanks Utata.org and its wonderful team for that project. Thanks for your patience reading the whole stuff.