A New Platform Unleashing the Power of Photography

Picture This aims to be the premier platform for the world’s most amazing photography and the people behind it. “We will share the photographers’ stories with a wider audience,” says founder Jan Broman.

WORDS: NICK RICE

THE PEOPLE BEHIND the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” were actually men of letters. It’s a surprising cultural linguistic quirk that they elevated pictures over and above their own arsenal of words.

In March 1911, the Syracuse Advertising Men’s Club held a banquet to discuss journalism. In reports following the event, Arthur Brisbane was quoted as stating, “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.”

Brisbane was among the most influential American newspaper editors of the 20th century and his column had an estimated daily readership of over 20 million. A skilful orator and speech writer, he also excelled in the field of public relations, coaching the industrial giants of the era, figures such as John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

A decade later however, the advertising executive Frederick R. Barnard, placed an advert to promote his agency in the trade journal Printers’ Ink with the slogan, “One Look Is Worth a Thousand Words,” and the phrase is often apocryphally attributed to him.

The fact is, the recognition of pictures as a superior force pre-dates both Brisbane and Barnard. The Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote in 1861, “The drawing shows me at one glance what might be spread over ten pages in a book,” the French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte exclaimed, “A good sketch is better than a long speech,” and the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci wrote in the 15th century that a poet would be, “overcome by sleep and hunger before describing with words what a painter is able to [depict] in an instant.”

Language is the greatest of weapons but communication, the very source behind the dominance of our species, has always wielded the pictorial alongside the lexical.

“Pictures have been the most intriguing content ever since some caveman with an artistic stroke forced his image onto the rock.” — JAN BROMAN

Jan Broman, the Co-founder with brother Per of the international photography museum Fotografiska, and now Founder of Picture This, gets right to the root of this when he says, “Pictures have been the most intriguing content ever since some caveman with an artistic stroke forced his image onto the rock.”

Broman is manifesting a long-held dream with the launch of Picture This, which aims to be the premier platform for the world’s most amazing photography and the photographer’s behind it. “It’s fantastic to have physical buildings and physical exhibitions but the digital world is so much bigger and there are so many advantages,” he says, adding, “It’s always been on my mind that someday I would do something that is digital to reach many more people and to make sure that everyone has more access to the best photographers and the best stories around photography.”

Discussing the development of Picture This with Broman and CEO Oscar Otteborn, it’s clear that the egalitarian force guiding Picture This, is to showcase and sell a full spectrum of photographic art, from abstract to avant-garde, editorial to event photography, fine art to photojournalism, and everything in between.

The grand mission then of this new editorial platform is to make exceptional photography available to everyone. To inspire, explore, show and sell the world’s best photography. To this end, Picture This will create a digital marketplace and launch a global digital and physical magazine that presents the stories behind the creators of photography.

Broman explains, “It’s the people in the photography space, the photographers and the stories they have… that’s why I’ve been in the space for so long. With Picture This we’ll be able to share those stories with a wider audience. We have a very high aim for the storytelling. We want people to access the stories behind their favourite images and photographers.”

“It doesn’t matter if you buy a poster, an NFT, or you’re a collector buying fine art – you’re interested in Picture This because that’s the digital home for the world’s best photography” — OSCAR OTTEBORN

Expanding on the process to achieve these goals, Oscar Otteborn says, “First, we look for the world’s best images. And then of course, behind every great image, there’s a great photographer. First image, then photographer, and then we start thinking about the product itself, whether it’s a poster or a limited edition or a fine art print or even an NFT.”

Picture This is intended to be a refreshingly non-elitist platform. There will be no velvet rope or VIP membership requisites, real or digital, barring access to the finest photographers and their work. “It doesn’t matter if you buy a poster, an NFT, or you’re a collector buying fine art – you’re interested in Picture This because that’s the digital home for the world’s best photography,” Otteborn explains.

Picture This is also establishing a photography school in collaboration with one of the best teachers in the world concerning collecting art and photography. It’s encouraging to see that the aim of democratising photographic art will be backed up by the means to teach people how to acquire and how to value their art.

Reflecting on why now is the right time for Picture This, Broman says, “Covid has made an acceleration of everything which is online and I think the world is ready to decorate their home with fantastic photography in a better way. We’ve seen that trend in Sweden for a long time and in other countries also. Home decoration is getting more important all over the world and this kind of quality, which we want to give people access to, is the natural step in home decoration, that you will upgrade the things on your walls.”

Otteborn chimes in here and bolsters the reasoning for why the timing is right, “When Covid hit the world, consumers spent more time and money at home and there was less consumption in areas such as travel and restaurants. Online art sales had been lagging but this trend has now shifted and we see more and more people buying art online. The growing interest and demand for home design, driven by urbanisation, makes the timing perfect for a platform like Picture This. To create new photography lovers is what we stand for, this is our vision and mission.”

Regardless of whoever said if first, a picture may well indeed be worth a thousand words, but with Picture This, people can be fascinated not only by awe-inspiring images, but also with the thousand words and more, behind them.

Broman explains, “In the last decade, photography has been revolutionising our society as a result of the symbiosis between social media and the smartphone. Images have emerged as the most important means of communication, dominating the interaction between humans, more powerful than writing, than speech. It happened to words 600 years ago. It happens to photography now.”

Yes, we are living in the age of the image, of that there’s no doubt, and the masterstroke that Picture This promises, is to not only elevate and broaden access to the world’s most impactful pictures, but also to honour words and reveal the myriad stories that exist behind the most amazing photography.

Photography: Thandiwe Muriu