July 2009
Imagination, an essential tool for spiritual enjoyment, functions only in relation to something that belongs to the past. We imagine something that does not exist in front of us. The senses, necessary for spiritual awakening, operate only in relation to something that exists in the present. We perceive through the senses something real that sets the mechanism of imagination in motion.
This relationship between past and present, imagination and senses, is magically captured by photography. The photographer's observation of a present subject can bring to the surface, or rather just below it, memories and references, which are indirectly incorporated into the final result. The more abstract and seemingly remote the relationship between the subject that stimulated the senses and the one that awakened the memories and imagination, the more likely is the emotional charge of the photograph. The closer the present subject is to the object of the imagination, the greater the risk of ending up with a bland and limited depiction of the imagination. The tree that the photographer sees and photographs will be strikingly more real (always as a tree), if it "carries" (through the photographer's imagination) memories and references, for example, of childhood games. However, if photographing an old man attempts to bring back memories of the photographer's own father (theoretically perfectly logical and feasible), then the result will not easily have great intensity, as it will essentially be a transcription of an old image in its modern version. It will therefore be difficult to achieve a transcending of the subject, because there will not be an internal dialogue and confrontation of two different subjects in time and identity, which are capable of meeting in a photograph due to the photographer's mediation.
For the success of this dialogue between past and present, the conscious operation of observation and the unconscious operation of memory and imagination are essential. In short, the photographer does not depict his imagination or his memories, but only the object of reality he observes. Only that the imagination and memories come almost automatically, through a mechanism of cultivation and sensitivity, to charge the depiction of the real with the personal elements of a past that belongs exclusively to the photographer's personal (visible and invisible) world. The more effortlessly and unconsciously this osmosis happens, the stronger the emotional result will be. The smells, for instance, of an Athenian afternoon may unconsciously provoke in the photographer a state of euphoria associated with seemingly forgotten moments of beauty, so that photographing a girl walking in the street speaks more of beauty and emotion than the actual beauty of the specific model.
This undoubtedly complex function of photography that always moves between two levels, between today and yesterday, between what we see and what we imagine, between the external and the internal world, requires an absolute respect for the exquisite simplicity of the photographic medium. That is, we must perceive and accept that a tree photographed by Eugene Atget or another photographed by Ansel Adams is nothing less or more than a tree, but they express extremely significant differences in content, due to what each photographer "carries" and instinctively invokes with the click of his camera.
Plato Rivellis