Being a reflective pratictioner: responsibility and ethic in visual production
The irrepleceability of the reflective method in research is revealed when we start thinking about the content we are producing.
I strongly believe that as creatives and artists we should all think about the impact of our work on society.
Before coming here in Portsmouth I held my degree in theory and techniques of multimidia visual communication; in those years I had the chance to explore various aspects, both practically and theoretically, of visual and performative arts.
As a photographer my main interest was initially focused on the ontological conception of photography.
As we know photographs, as well as other media, not always shows the truth. Andrè Bazìn theorised the concept of immanent representtion of reality or, to make it easy, the principle for which an event is never endowed with a sense a priori. To the other hand we consider reliable the photo finish, because of the context.
The time elapsed between the ictured moment and the fruition generates ambiguity.All the pictures are ambiguous because they are all extracted from the time continuity.
I approached two different ways to photograph
Artistic photography gave me the chance to explore peculiarities like the interpretation of the image, the visual manipulation, the concept of Kunstvollen and the chance to play with meanings, understanding how to handle the creation of possible meanings.
I really enjoyed this practice also because allows to have many tries (ex. studio sessions) and reflect on your own visions.
This is not quiet possible if we talk about documentary photography.
On the contrary, in fact, the photodocumentarist must be ready to katch the moment or, depends on where you are, you could even fall between your subject and a bullet.
Especially in documentary photography we must consider the immanent feature, but it is not everything: what is right to clarify theoretically is the relationship between practice, aesthetic, documented subject and the pratictioner. This relationship means also to challenge my work with other students, researchers, other field pratictioners or even institutions and organizations. The only way to fight/reduce the immanent feature, is to complete and contextualise through interviews, studies, videos etc..
Social events and phenomena are not alwais immediate. I am a strong reader and for me has been physiological to transfer the theory in practice. One of the most meaningful studies for me, has been B. Brecht's thought: theoretically still linked to the expressionism, he turns to the audience by stimulating reflections, appelaing to the human reason, linking himself directly with the enlightenment tradition.
The main point is that the media we use is only a tool and before the technocracy advent (consequence of the industrial revolutions), the human being had the same need to describe itself from the down of the times.
Documentar photography is not only about the single, but about the human community and it is fundamental a previous self analysis: only after the analysis of the relationship between me, my practice, the media, the context and the subject, I can think to have to do with the creation of meaning.
The visual researcher must work between mechanisms and structures of society and social actors. As we can understand the practice can't be aseptic.
Relating the practice with the historical times, we can count many functions of the visual production in history of art
«art» has been used to hand down knowledge
(Lascoux cave, France)
To describe the fashion of the time
(Bikini women, Piazza Armerina)
To tell us about historical facts
(Issus Battle, Pompei finds, National Aechaeological Museum , Naples)
or stories
(Ophelia by John Everett Millais)
To study and learn from the reality
(studies of the fetus in the womb by Leonardo Da Vinci)
Or express yourself, your joy or your deepest nightmares
(Saturn divoring his son, Francisco Goya's private painting)
To affirm power
(Coronation of Napoleon by Jaques-Loius David)
or to state against it
(The fourth state by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo)
to describe people and times
(1-Potato Eaters by Van Gogh, 2- MaoTseTung by Warhol)
to depict reality to exorcise traumas
(Neorealism- Rome, Open City by Rossellini)
to turn the history in collective memory
(longer-exposure photograph of the Trinity nuclear explosion seconds after detonation on July 16, 1945)
In my case artistic practice becomes activism
#Rome15.10.011 #Manifestation #against the #economic #crisis
Aesthetic and formal research
+
social commitment
=
artistic practice
Images can deeply touch people and influence their choices; it is also important to me because we can change someone's life.
I shoot this picture in Palemo. This photoshooting is very dear to me because I had the chance to work dealing with my motherland and its social contraddictions. Valentina is proud of this picture because she felt free to be herself, she felt free to show her face and say "I'm not afraid". Valentina's father is now serving his sentence in jail. Talking about violence on women in Sicily is a big deal. Here, in fact, the violence is not the only problem: in Sicily the omertà, a code of silence, it is very a very common phenomena and it overlaps the more tipical silence by shame or fear. Omertà is part of the code of honour tipical of the mafious mentality which is deeply radicated in Sicily and other region in south Italy.
