The photo on your back

There are no creative acts that are not, at the same time, also political.

Anyone who approaches a means of expression should not forget that in the very act of approaching it, they express the intent to act creatively. And however much we are told otherwise from various quarters (and the results are there to see), acting creatively is not a solipsistic-onanistic exercise, one that concerns only oneself and whose fruit must then be imposed on others, demanding their attention as though it were a right. Nor is it an act aimed at communicating this or that concept, unless one later decides to make it so; communication operates on a very different and narrower plane than the one we are attempting to approach here, and it is the province of advertisers, journalists, politicians, popularizers of every kind, and postmen.

To act creatively means, above all, to grant oneself the possibility of being free.

Those who at this point wipe away a tear of emotion, feeling perfectly at home with the matter, should convince themselves that we are not reciting a slogan, but speaking of something damnably difficult that, I would almost venture, comes close to the meaning of an entire life. If everyone who dreams of acting freely in photography stopped seriously, even for a moment, to reflect on what this entails, they would understand that the first step would be to stop shooting, to stop publishing, to stop compulsively reproducing photos already seen, comfortable photos, fashionable colors, winning clichés, and news-broadcast emotions; in short, they should stop striving so ardently and devotedly to consolidate fashion and everything it dramatically implies.

Perhaps it would be worth becoming shy again.

Acting creatively, in photography as in any other expressive field, means being honest to the bone, seeking the impossible, adoring the useless, being constantly “hungry.” In photography more than in other fields, and in these recent years more than before, it means learning to select, to withhold, to discard. The technological drift that, in truth, is suffocating culture as a whole with that unbearable myth of a thousand and one possibilities within reach, has stunned everyone to the point that no one seems to have the nerve anymore to take a stance and set themselves a limit, as if narrowing one’s field of action were an open admission of ineptitude. The truth is quite different. The truth is that we do not know what to do with the thousand and one possibilities technology offers us, for as long as we do not know what it means to grant ourselves the possibility of being free.

If we knew, with sufficient clarity, what our great question is, we would know how to make use of the means at our disposal with the skill needed, at the very least, not to be overwhelmed by them. We would know, for instance, that mourning a craft-based past by lending it almost mythical contours is not enough to free us from the problem, and indeed makes us obtuse; we would know when black-and-white barely saves one of our images from the wastebasket and when, instead, it is the very “skin” of our photograph; we would know that ten shots are not ten photographs; in short, we would know that the crux of the problem is always the same, and it is that incommunicable something that lies not in the tool but in the awareness of the one who uses it.

And how does one do all this? How does one come to know one’s own great question and act creatively? I have already stated what I believe is the first, unavoidable step: to stop acting if one does not know the question. Restraining oneself when creativity does not stem from a premise of absolute honesty is the only weapon against the catastrophic consequence that our compulsive doing has on others, namely boredom or, worse still, habituation. Because I want to repeat it: no creative act is without consequences for our fellow human beings, and so, if it is not able to kindle their vitality — which would be desirable — it may well be capable of doing the opposite.

Then the second step: look at the works of others, know as many of them as possible, understand where they come from, when they were born, in what context and what problem they address. One must let oneself be inspired by the insights and limitations of those who came before us; one must love those who gave themselves unconditionally and despise those who betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; one must allow works to provoke us until we catch fire, until all that remains of us is pleasure and boundless passion. One must then go deeper and understand which details, in the works we have loved, disturbed our balance so profoundly as to give us new momentum, and why they did so, and finally carry them away with us until an indeterminate number of stolen details builds our own great question.

I don’t deny feeling a little embarrassed to say that one must study, but a worrying host of visual artists who don’t look, writers who don’t read, and critics who don’t criticize makes me think it is not entirely superfluous. Perhaps we tend to confuse education with culture. And indeed it would be more accurate on my part to say that one must let oneself become passionate (and not only about oneself), which has much more to do with cultivating a culture than with acquiring an education. Certainly, stopping to unmask, one by one, the deceptions that countless commercial clichés foist on us, together with propaganda of every kind, proves indispensable. Taking this path, only apparently static, can make our images sit on our back like an invincible desire, a need for fulfillment that goes beyond any ordinary sense of measure and self-perception, rather than like a backpack loaded with stones. Or worse, like those proverbial roof tiles that fall on you when you least expect it.

These are, in truth, the opening moves of the research. From these first works gathered under the name Studies 2012, an inquiry officially begins, with all its contradictions and its fears.