Traditional Categories
It is well-known and almost universally accepted, the classification of photographic categories into genres of applied photography. Indeed, with boundaries much more specific than any similar classification in other forms of communication.
The classification of each image into its respective photographic category (e.g., advertising, fashion, journalistic, news, tourism, sports, etc.) is based on the depicted subject, the adopted style, or the context in which it is presented.
To these superficially distinct categories was added that of artistic photography, emphasizing its etymological origin, namely its sought-after kinship with the fine arts. This category, too, can apply the criteria of subject, style, and context for its most secure integration.
These distinctions I also used for ease of communication, although I did not adopt the results of the applications with satisfaction. Increasingly, many images remained unclassified. On the other hand, I was frustrated by the thought that artistic photography was nothing more than a special category of applied photography.
The temptation to move towards more general distinctions and categories like "Commercial and non-commercial photography" was great. Yet, new unanswered questions arose. Does the commercial element weigh in at the conception, the execution, or as an economic outcome? After all, why should a photograph be considered "artistic" in contrast to another "commercial advertising" photograph, when often the language and codes they use are identical, and the value of the first is much higher than the second? The mere context of presentation (gallery - magazine) cannot be enough to underline the difference.
MARGINAL IMAGES
Thus, suddenly, after years of complacency in the "clear" categories, I found myself with a world of unclassified and unattached images. This reinforces the view that what the years add is a confirmation of ambiguity and a strengthening of intuition. Because the latter compelled me to seek a new, perhaps freer, distinction, necessary, in my opinion, for understanding the peculiarity of the artistic-poetic image, which ultimately constitutes the main focus of my photographic interest.
I then sought out images that move on the boundaries of the unquestionably accepted categories. As we all know, an advertising photograph promotes an idealized product for consumption, a journalistic one highlights a specific event, an identity photograph records the features of a person, a tourist photograph beautifies a landscape. However, the interest is that an artistic, or poetic if you prefer, photograph also depicts objects, events, people, or landscapes. And it inevitably adopts a style that kinships with one of those that define the established applied categories.
Yet, at the boundaries of these categories, I began to discover images that captivated my interest. But conversely, those that had already captivated my interest earlier seemed to indeed move in this fascinating area of ambiguity of boundaries between the clear images I knew why they were born.
THE USELESS
For certainly, the first common characteristic of all these "marginal" images is the "useless" of their existence. The recognition of the depicted subject does not determine the cause or purpose of their creation. Even if a genuine and possibly sincere reason is discernible, it is not capable, in these cases, to dissolve our conviction that significant is a cryptic reason. And this cannot be other than the relationship of the creator with photography and his desire to build a photographic reality. Then, the mundane depicted subjects (people - objects - landscapes - events) appear to us as intermediaries used to transport us into the world of the photographer. Maybe for this reason, the photographer prefers to use low-tone subjects, knowing they are easier intermediaries. Although approaching subjects with significant specific weight (e.g., important events, impressive landscapes, beautiful or ugly people) happens less frequently (but more significantly), according to the principle that the size of the problem is directly proportional to the quality of the outcome.
THE FAILURE
Another common characteristic of the creative images of this ambiguous area is that they exist only when they succeed. In other cases, the experienced and sensitive viewer recognizes the attempt, while others are surprised, unable to comprehend neither the motives nor the reason for the failure. Conversely, an applied photograph, even a failed one, carries the stamp of its goals, which it can always serve to some extent.
THE CHARGE
An even more indistinct characteristic is the point where specific messages give way to abstract charge. That is, where mass communication gives way to unique communication. It is an undeniable fact that applied, commercial photographs, no matter how special and clear the personality of their creator, contain elements easily discernible, capable of being perceived by the largest possible number of recipients, given that the reason they were born was to serve as carriers of messages, ideas, concepts. To become, therefore, points of a mass communication, or rather, a communication directed from one to many. The useless and vague nature of the artistic image can only be negated thanks to individual communication, or rather, a peculiar mass communication, where one communicates individually with each of the many. This becomes clearer if one considers that the creator photographer neither has nor wishes to transmit a specific message, even if it concerns him. He creates one or more images using the discipline of a specific medium of artistic expression, to transmit a set of sensitivities, that is, that part of his personality that determines much more his "being" than his "beliefs." Therefore, any object transformed by the intervention of the photographer becomes the intermediary for the transmission of a piece of his personal world. However, this piece will not be recognized by the third, the viewer, with the specific elements that constituted the starting point of its creation, since not even the photographer can precisely determine them. Even if he attempts such determination, he will draw more from his thoughts than from the photograph itself. The third, the viewer, will perceive with his sensitivity, and with the additional help of familiarity with the photographic dialect, an emotional charge that comes from the successful transcendence of the subject. And thus, individualized communication is achieved, where each viewer will have a personal approach to the work. The photographer will hope for these communications to multiply, but he will not be forced to consider the transmission of the content of his photograph as an essential part of creation.
THE SELF-CHALLENGE
This fact also explains another difference of these personal images from those of the applied space. In the latter, the photographer seeks to dominate the codes of communication and the way of photographing them. And when he succeeds, he continuously uses the same method, since he has achieved the sought-after result, which is the effective transmission. On the other hand, the artist photographer shuns the codes and wishes not to permanently dominate the medium, given that the sought-after is the deepening in his world, and the surprise of himself.
In this way, constantly self-challenged, he pushes his sensitivity and intelligence to their limits, and manages to enrich and charge the images in a deeper, more complex, more abstract way. Thus extending the possibilities of his image.
We thus have the artist photographer literally struggling in a space of moving sand. A space of ambiguity, devoid of boundaries and goals, without specific criteria for success, a space where the glaringly real must become illusion. And, most importantly, a space where failure is the rule and success the exception. This space cannot be precisely defined, but it is a space that moves and occupies the "unexploited" and "useless" space left free by the sure images of photographers, who know the starting point and the goal of their photographs.
TIME
But there is also a fundamental element of photography, which participates almost decisively in the demarcation of the artistic area in contrast to the "broadly defined" commercial applied photography. This is the element of time. And moreover, a time with a dual interpretation. The time of the medium's stillness. That is, the time that denotes the past (moment of capture), the present (moment of viewing), and the future (certainty of duration). Also, the time that concerns the past, the memories of the photographer, whose confirmation is ceremonially underlined with the photographic click.
Non-transcendent images, as are almost by definition those that serve pre-known goals, could not, or rather did not want to, incorporate the element of time. They are emphatically ephemeral. This also applies to many "artistic" constructions, which precisely because they adopted the language of the plastic arts, deliberately disregarded the decisive element of time for photography. Perhaps for this reason, although they use a photographic camera, they are justified in renouncing the title of photographer. These photographs talk about a present, usually idealizing or isolating the object or event they depict, placing it either in the space of the unreal or in that of current events. While on the contrary, poetry-photography moves, in its best moments, in a space where the instantaneous description, capturing a piece of time, gives it duration. The viewer knows that the depicted existed, (invoking his knowledge), he sees it today (based on his senses) and knows that it will exist tomorrow (using his imagination). And these three times are equally important and valuable for the enjoyment of photography.
However, time also functions from the photographer's side in a completely personal way. I believe that to a great extent this time is responsible for the peculiarity of the description. The photographer has stored the past time through his senses. However, the enjoyment of this past time is only possible with its invocation through new stimuli of the senses. When he is therefore in front of images, sounds, smells that urge him to capture them, past images are also enlisted that determine and impose the affirmation that underlines the click. The tree, as each photographer captures it, is simultaneously the tree in front of him, but also the "tree" of his entire previous life. And the tree, which the viewer sees as an image, is the tree of the photograph and simultaneously the "tree" of his own previous life. Precisely because the ambiguity of the artistic image allows the photographer and the viewer to respectively incorporate and catch their own references, it becomes (and rightly so) an example to be avoided for every applied commercial nature photography.
THE DESCRIPTION
There are certainly cases where time seems to play a significant role, while it is a professional photograph, such as some journalistic or news images. However, most often it is a time related to the narrative of the photograph and not to the description of the elements it contains. The narrative, however, is not a photographic dimension. It is a loan from the word. From the caption and from the extraphotographic knowledge. The image itself cannot narrate. Only to describe it can.
A WAY OF THINKING
Through the exploration of the individual characteristics of photography-art easily emerges the question, whether these characteristics can serve also as criteria, as a code for decryption and classification of photographs.
But if we think about how vague, although true, these characteristics are, then we will avoid considering them criteria. But why then is any classification necessary? And if classification is relatively easy for the categories of commercial photography, it is almost impossible for artistic photography, as it was defined (?) above. Let us therefore be satisfied that foreign magazines usually award prizes for the categories of fashion, advertising, news, journalistic, sports, and fine arts and let's accept that the photographs we love along with those of Evans, Atget, Cameron, Sander, Winogrand, Frank, Sudek, Bresson, Kertész, and so many others would not find a category to belong to. And let's accept even more the above characteristics of creative photography, as a way of thinking, process, and behavior.
Plato Rivellis