Photographer (2001)
I have repeatedly claimed on behalf of photography the identity of "visual poetry" in contrast to today’s dominant visual character. This difference would not have much meaning if we lived in another era. However, under today's conditions, emphasizing this difference constitutes an act of resistance against the risks posed (without concealing them) by the behavior of the visual space, which within the framework of its postmodern fashion has found photography as a very suitable game.
Observing the efforts of young photographers around me, I notice certain dominant trends. These are not so much about what interests and attracts them, but about what they are informed interests others and their external projection. In this process, the "visual" habits have taken the place of a "code of conduct". What the young photographer realizes today is that he must adopt the tactics that prevail in the visual arts circles to be considered successful.
The first bitter observation is that success is considered a necessary prerequisite for the artistic journey of the new creator and that this success depends very little on the quantity and quality of his artistic production and much more on the social fortune that any production of his will have. From a certain point of view, an artist should never feel successful, simply because his artistic search, along with joy, fills him with anxiety about whether his artistic goals match his artistic capabilities, in which he may believe, but also fears.
Transferring the problem of success from the internal and individual space to the external and social one naturally leads to the adoption of the social criteria that prevail at any given time. In our era, and especially in the field of visual arts, artistic social establishment prevails, which can be certified and recognized (by the artist himself, by his relatives, by the artistic world, and by his broader social space) in one (or even better several) of the following ways: a) By acquiring a university degree, b) through the economic recognition of the work, and c) through communicative projection.
The first expresses an unjustifiable complex of inferiority of the artist against the bourgeois society of "education" (not culture) where the old distinctions of the nobility of hereditary titles have been replaced by the accumulation of university degrees of many and various levels. The "theoretical" artists that emerge are usually deficient and deprived creators and at the same time superficial and opportunistic theorists. Besides, their youth usually destined them for other things. Economic recognition introduces a commercial element of buying and selling products and not remuneration in the form of service provision. The difference is crucial because it introduces the concept of the client, as well as the identity and image of the product, and its promotion. Concepts that lead to the necessary commercial "showcase". The third way of establishment, namely communicative projection, has to do with the commercial "showcase", but also involves a large invested value in projection for the sake of projection, within a broader perception according to which in our era you exist if the media decide so.
My thoughts on this found an unexpected ally, or rather another tangible example. This is the catalog of the DESTE collection of visual artworks, which I acquired during a recent visit to an exhibition of these works in Cyprus. I surpass the issue of the visual critique of the collection since it escapes my jurisdiction and capabilities, without however being able to silence the sorrow and wonder that seized me at the sight of the majority of the works. What immediately impressed me in this accompanying catalog of just seventy-six pages is that along with the depictions of the works in the various exhibition spaces, about one hundred and thirty different people from the fields of business, politics, journalism, and artistic criticism and curation (that is, from the realm of power) are also depicted, individuals indeed significant, worthy, and outstanding in their field. The reader of the catalog often had the feeling that its content was secondarily the works and primarily the spectators and the emphasis of the implied phrase "everyone was there". It seems, therefore, that the most important event for the spectators of the works and the readers of the catalog is that they themselves are present at exhibitions where so many important people have given their presence and prestige, but also for the collector that the said collection cannot but be important since so many and such prominent people have given their presence and prestige, a fact that will feed both his vanity and the monetary value of the works. In short, the catalog borrows the behavior and usefulness of the worldly pages of lifestyle magazines with their small photographs of openings or receptions, which I am sure are read first by their readers.
The new artist no longer has the margin to dream of something different from what this catalog presents to him. The vision of a world of success and recognition to which he inevitably belongs, a goal for which most of the time he would do anything indirectly or directly asked of him, even (and especially) to adjust the direction of his creation.
Plato Rivellis