We have the same relationship with
The subject will be explored through papers by various intellectuals in the days leading up to the PhotoVogue festival moderator, there will be live discussions at Base during the event.
“Look at how many pictures are uploaded online every day and how much is consumed in our In mobile phones and devices, our eyes rest on images that do not exceed 0. Seconds before continuing to scroll, I asked myself what would Susan Sontag say today?
Our purpose for this festival is to revolve around our To start a conversation on a topic called the “overexposure paradox.” We wanted to spark a debate about how ubiquitous images shape our ability to perceive, read, and understand images, and the world around us.”
By Alessia Glaviano, Head of Global PhotoVogue and Director of PhotoVogue Festivals.
Today we present an article by Emanuele Coccia.
For centuries, we thought the beginning of everything was this word. We believe that language can start and end wars. It is through them that covenants are made or broken. We use words to declare our love or the end of our love. In a world constructed from words, images are seen as secondary ornaments, hanging on the walls of curatorial venues, museums, or other spaces constructed from words. But decades ago, everything changed. Words seem to have become almost impotent compared to images, which, far from being frills, are now vital tools for writing ourselves and our history. Just look at our smartphones to see this. We may not realize it, but despite being invented to keep our language away from our bodies through our voices, smartphones are largely the devices that lead us to begin communicating through images. We don’t send them as articles with illustrations, and they don’t require a title. We also stop thinking about them and use them to communicate.
Because of this, images, especially photography, have become the protagonists of history. Photographs are no longer merely a representation of an event or event, but now seem to be able to incorporate the event itself. Such is the image of Aylan Kurdi when we think of the Syrian refugee crisis, the drowning toddler found dead on a Greek beach. The same goes for John Moore’s photo of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying desperately at the feet of Border Patrol agents, which seems to embody and summarize, rather than just paint, the Trump administration and the aftermath of its handling. US-Mexico border issue. By the same token, looking at the tragically iconic figure of Richard Drew’s fallen man is enough to make viewers understand and relive the tragedy of the Twin Towers attack on New York’s World Trade Center. Historical events are not only magnified through photography – they seem to be summed up to the extent that they risk their existence only on the surface.
So, exploiting an image is always a delicate act: it means literally using and manipulating history, not just how it portrays. Thus, the circulation of images can make the events within them more politically and historically significant – and real. For the same reason, however, overexposure to such images may turn the same event into a trivial, ordinary thing, thus losing its true meaning and ability to stand out.
is Susan Sontag who clarified such a paradox in the late 1970s and questioned its Moral implications and consequences, which are especially important when the story at stake is someone else’s pain. Faced with the dangers and resulting numbness of repeated exposure to images of others’ pain and distress, Sontag has long researched how to use these images for good. How to reconcile the need to disclose and report facts and events with the risk that people may become apathetic or indifferent to the suffering of others?
How to prevent photojournalism from becoming a collective cynic education or an act of social numbing – general anesthesia? The fact that images now form the subject of the history we make every day also leads to another important paradox, which arises as an undeniable fact every time we talk about diversity. A perfect demonstration is a photo from PhotoVogue, which from the start positioned itself at the intersection of ethics and aesthetics. I’m referring to the photo in the “The Gucci Beauty Tales” collection that depicts Ellie Goldstein, a British model with Down syndrome. The image, though, made headlines around the world, and in this case morally relevant is its circulation and normalizing effect on the diversity of our gazes and physical relationships with others. So does Veronica Yoko Plebani, the athlete on the cover of Vogue Italia. But I can offer many other examples, for this is an indispensable ambivalence that seems to be inscribed in all images and their use. In fact, in this case, it was by leaking a new type of imagery—and thus normalizing their content—that a form of moral revolution took place. The normalization process allowed by the use of certain images is at the same time a tool to change our conscience and a poison to paralyze and “die” our conscience. That’s why it’s so difficult to use their power properly: images can act as mouthpieces or silencers for public morals.
PhotoVogues Global Open Call • The Next Great Fashion Image-Maker • Jury
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Actually, the image’s Fundamentally ambiguous but Alessia Glaviano’ is 
Selected Theme version of the PhotoVogue section. Unlike the simplistic and Manichean gaze that accompanies our relationship to the image, which shifts our attitude from the most uncompromising attack to the most naive praise, this festival will develop a new ethics of the image, they realize Much of their true strength lies in their ambiguity and radical ambivalence. The point will be to understand that photographs are not made for the abstract contemplation of a passive audience. If images are where history takes place, it is because a relationship to them is impossible except for a form of action. We need images to act, talk and change reality, not just get acquainted with it.
That’s what the invention of social media is about after all: no longer simple audiences, but humans who use images and act through them. We are all responsible for the image we transmit and exist in our lives.
However, this is also the reason for their perpetual conflict and ambiguity. Each image is a doom that changes the underlying history of the co-op’s ongoing battle. Thinking about visuals in the context of conflict is like thinking of photography as stopping human history once and for all, making it impossible.
Every time an image is used something happens. It is for this reason that each of them represents an event that makes it impossible to define what is clear, especially from a moral standpoint. An image can always and only be confronted and judged by another image. We will never stop shooting. We will never stop producing and using images.
Picture:
Jon Raff Man
You stand in the open field (waterfall) archival pigment print and resin on dibond aluminium and wood
.4 x .2 x 7.6 cm
Unique
Thanks to the artist and Sprueth Magers
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Actually, the image’s Fundamentally ambiguous but Alessia Glaviano’ is
That’s what the invention of social media is about after all: no longer simple audiences, but humans who use images and act through them. We are all responsible for the image we transmit and exist in our lives.
However, this is also the reason for their perpetual conflict and ambiguity. Each image is a doom that changes the underlying history of the co-op’s ongoing battle. Thinking about visuals in the context of conflict is like thinking of photography as stopping human history once and for all, making it impossible.
Every time an image is used something happens. It is for this reason that each of them represents an event that makes it impossible to define what is clear, especially from a moral standpoint. An image can always and only be confronted and judged by another image. We will never stop shooting. We will never stop producing and using images.
Picture:
Jon Raff Man
You stand in the open field (waterfall) archival pigment print and resin on dibond aluminium and wood
.4 x .2 x 7.6 cm
Unique
Thanks to the artist and Sprueth Magers
