#reflection on #visualreference #1

“There are and have been and will be an infinite number of things on earth. Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different. Everything that has been on earth has been different from any other thing. That is what I love: the differentness, the uniqueness of all things and the importance of life... I see something that seems wonderful; I see the divineness in ordinary things.”

– November 28, 1939, paper on Plato, senior English seminar, Fieldston School

“They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.” — in response to request for a brief statement about photographs, March 15, 1971

Diane Arbus wasn't looking for beauty or her idealisation.

I guess it is more about recognizing beauty in reality, our ability in detecting it in daily life. Or also the acceptance of the ugliness as an essential element to recognise the beauty. Also I think that beauty is not essential: we are abituate to think that a picture, a painting, a movie ecc.. must include an element of common beauty (or, better, the proposal of a concept of beauty built on sales techniques) in order to attract the viewer and I must say that this is quiet intellectually offensive because we can actually be attracted by many factors and process a wide range of emotions.

Proposing a fake idea of beauty generates abominations like objectivization or the hypersexualization. This practice is quiet dangerous in my view, because the majority of the images consumers have no tool to read the images and the actual effect is a passive absorption, not an active enjoyment.

Reality can be very tough and photography, as well as other artistic expressions, must investigate it. We do too often forget that being an artist means being a sort of avant garde and as such we have the responsibility to think out of the box and process the imputs in order to progress as humankind community.

Being an artist is not an individualistic choice.