Preachin' to the Choir

I think I might be old fashioned and this is probably where I will lose many readers but, when I go to an exhibit of visual works in a gallery I expect, well, visuals not text. Even though I enjoy reading quite a bit there is a time and place.
I went to an opening tonight of photos, snapshots taken by Gulf War veterans while they were in active duty during the original Gulf War conflict. The photos read like snapshots not "art photos" and were only about one fourth of the story, the other three fourths of the story was retold via text of transcribed conversations with the veterans. So the text gave a context for the snapshots and it was, over all an interesting project but I kept wondering if the gallery space was the appropriate venue for the project. There we were, educated art consumers being informed about the intracacies of this particular war mostly by the text with a bit of backup from the accompanying snapshots and it was great. I love reading about this because of my politics yet I wonder if that might be this project's downfall as an artistic endeavor or am I just pissed that I had to read too much, in a gallery setting, with very, very little pay off.