Generally those who SPAM (would count as a "bad site") add lots of textual content because Google needs that to rank things. Having a site that is entirely image based will not mark you as a bad site or a good site. But unless you work to optimize it in some way then it likely won't rank for much simply because Google won't know what to rank it for.
A common misconception is that Good Site = Ranks in Google and Bad Site = Does not Rank. This is not always the case, there are lots of good sites that are buried in Google not because Google thinks they are bad, but because it doesn't know what to rank them for, among other things.
In terms of image only sites, Flickr is a huge site that is basically just images and I see them rank for tons of keywords. Thats a long response to say, an image only site will pose different challenges then a text based site, but it can still do well in the SERPs.