February 2006
It is a common suggestion often made to young and aspiring photographers to photograph as often as possible. This might seem useless at first glance, since photography is known for its easy technique. However, there are many convincing reasons to support this advice. Let’s try to highlight some of them.
Firstly, the photographer needs to forget the camera and use their eye. Only frequent contact with it can eliminate its presence and mediation.
Secondly, if the photographic process is a brief and rare break in our busy life, then, like any break, it is light and pleasant, but seldom serious and substantial.
Thirdly, when photography is resurrected from oblivion at very sparse intervals, it easily becomes a secondary process of illustrating preconceived ideas. The resulting photos are nothing more than visual applications of mental constructions. The magic of the photographic image and its abstract connection with the photographer’s unconscious is then lost forever. Unfortunately, most of today's artistic photographs are of this kind, as photographers love photography less and less while placing greater importance on their meager and usually simplistic ideas.
Fourthly, when the rekindling of our relationship with photography happens infrequently and sporadically, there is a great risk of associating it with our emotional states. Our happiness and unhappiness then tend to burden our photos, highlighting their most superficial characteristics and even affecting their thematic content. However, when the photographic process begins to permeate all conditions and periods of our life, it better exploits the space created between our happy and unhappy moments, a space that is temporally larger and emotionally liberated. Then our photos constitute much more indirect references to our happiness or unhappiness, embracing broader areas of our intellectual potential in a more transcendental and abstract way.
Fifthly, casual engagement with the photographic process pushes the photographer to repeat their easy tasks. The photographer thus reproduces the photos they have already successfully taken, as this protects them from the ultimate threat of failure. Conversely, frequent contact with our photographic self reveals the tedious aspect of our easy tasks. In other words, we manage to renounce our expressive easiness, as it would cause us the most unbearable boredom. A boredom even more painful because while we realize it ourselves, it is rarely perceived by others. This creative ennui, much more than any occasional euphoria, will lead us to transcend our limits and to a potentially more interesting photographic outcome.
Plato Rivellis