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Textos: Diferentes autores
Fotos: @ Eduardo Ruigómez

Democratizing photography… what for?

Cartier Bresson used to say that the proliferation of photographic equipment contributed to the increment of bad photographs. If he had seen today’s cell phones with cameras that exponentially increase in amount and the other cameras that are added daily to the arsenal of domestic appliances, he’d be horrified. Was HCB right, does this “democratization” of photography go against its quality? I think some precisions have to be made before trying to answer this question.

In the first place, not all photographical images are art and not all photographers are artists. Secondly, an image is art only if it triggers processes, like a reflection, an action (whether esthetical or not) or and individual or social change. In the third place, art as a language, even while it is an extension of daily language, is constructed on a different perception of reality. Fourth, any art form is in permanent mutation. In the case of photography, technological innovations have especially

contributed to its changes, as well as experimentation with existing technologies, the incorporation of new subjects – daily life being one of the most fruitful – and lastly the surprising human capacity to create.

So, there are forces here at play that can be contradictory or not at all times harmonic: for one part, the ones that are originated by today’s simplicity of image production, as experienced by humanity as never

before; on the other, by the imperative to point out differences, embark on new roads, break with established preconceptions and to communicate the new, a task that is not always easy. Rather, it is difficult and it implies creating new languages that are often not understood. Photography resolves its most important dilemmas in this second plane, using the technological advances as another means to attain its objective.