Alt Text

Alt Text was a small photography and writing project from Matthew Howell that concluded in 2021.

Each week, usually on Sunday, a small piece of writing is accompanied by a photograph. The writing focuses on the physical subject of the photo, gently pulling at its context, and finding some part of a larger whole. Sometimes the photos are new, but often it’s a good excuse to go digging in the archives and pull out interesting bits.

The work is meant to be something of an inverse of the HTML img element’s alt attribute. In practice, the image’s alt text is an accessibility consideration, describing the image, that for any number of reasons may not be viewable by the reader.

Here, the alt text is offered first, perhaps with more depth and detail than the image itself.

This project influenced my current /photos collection, which all now include robust alt text and occasionally, small descriptive essays like the ones shared here.