The photograph exists in itself, not when it captures a significant event, but when it itself is the event.
Images, like words, express either the world of reality or that of their creator, only when they are composed together. No word in poetry, regardless of the meaning it implies, would be able to express anything on its own and detached from the other words of the poetic discourse, whether it be realism or abstraction. The same would happen with any cinematic image if it were detached from the image that preceded it and from the one that follows. In both cases, therefore, a composition is required that is achieved through rhythm, time, motion, narration, and depending on the case, it is based on scenarios or imagined images.
The photograph (contrary to the above) is unique, solitary, and still, but nevertheless, it comes closer than words or moving images to the absolute realism of depiction. However, this depiction cannot be extended and recreated based on a scenario (since it cannot have a narrative with a single and unique element), or on an imagined image (since it itself is an image). Therefore, the photograph must contain the subversion of being liberated from extensions, explanations, references, and citations. This dimension of the absolute is what makes a photograph good or, otherwise, non-existent. This is essentially what Cartier-Bresson means when he claims that a photograph is either "yes" or "no," but never "maybe."
Thus, the power of a photograph seems to be the realistic recording, while in reality, it is the depiction itself. The photograph exists by itself, not when it captures a significant event, but when it itself is the event. This can become reality once the photographer realizes that it is not possible to support the value of his photograph on the realistic transfer of events, meanings, or emotions, but he must use the existing elements and transform them into events, meanings, or emotions through the tools offered by the photograph as an expressive medium.
Therefore, a photograph cannot convey the image of a specific happy or unhappy moment, nor rely on a specific smile or tear. Its only way out is to seek the equivalent of all these in the photograph itself through implication and abstraction. That is, the laughter or crying must originate from the photograph itself so that it is not just an intermediary between the viewer and a funny or sad scene of life, but rather it generates the emotions itself. Just as we accept that the beauty of the portrayed in a photographic portrait does not ensure the artistic value of the photograph, so a comical moment is not enough to justify the autonomous existence of a photograph.
This is something that the tender Robert Doisneau and the caustic Elliott Erwitt did not understand when they capture a "funny" real event that never becomes photographic and, conversely, this is what the caustic Garry Winogrand and the tender Andreas Schoinas understood when they manage to convey the playfulness of our human existence through the intelligence of the photographic medium itself. The players who might all be running together towards the opposing goal, but who rather tumble from the tilt of the camera, as well as the isolated -against the gray background of heterogeneous unreal objects- stark-white maestro of a band that is not seen but implied, convey simultaneously the sarcastic humor of life and that of the photographic medium.
Plato Rivellis