What did we do with Photography?

In this image a family enjoys the boat trip, at no time did they pick up their cell phone, enjoyed the tour, lived an experience together. I would very much like to share with you reader, some observations about our time, and some questions about photography. Since I was a child I have been fascinated by this incredible form of expression of humanity. For many years I have dedicated my life not only to photography, but to everything that photography brings. I believe that there is art in photography, poetry, movement, there is abstraction, messages, there are texts, reports, there is restlessness, action, peace, comfort, there is something in it that only philosophy can reveal. Perhaps photography is so complex that we do not yet have the real dimension of its strength! The term photography means drawing with light. Many talk about various aspects of their nature and power! If we look deeper, we will come up with something extraordinary. Photography is the art of freezing Light, time and space, eternalizing them on a piece of paper. Take a picture, look at it carefully. You will not see just an image, you will see a moment of time, containing a piece of our space, which through light, was used at that moment to be fixed there. It is an account of something that actually happened, a present reality, coming from the past. Every photograph is a trip to the past, from the moment it was taken. And it can never be the same. Well, photography is a moment in time that was recorded and in fact existed and continues to exist in the present, even from the past. Photography brings emotion, is loaded with meanings, and an infinite form of interpretations, because in each being it has the ability to awaken something unusual. If you didn't have in any way a way to portray everything that happens around you? If you didn't have the chance to record an important moment in your life? What would your life be like today without this technology? In the early days of our existence, we did not have the necessary technologies for such a situation. After years of evolution, our species takes its first steps towards the abstract, showing with paintings on cave walls and stones around its primitive dwellings, situations of its daily lives and events of great importance until then. Our need for expression is as primitive as communication itself, and all this has been evolving. In more remote times, photography was a peculiar event. People gathered to take a photo, it was in fact an event. After a few years it began to become popular, but with its restrictions. Photography came to be seen as an art form, especially by photographers who began to use it for this purpose. The photograph was used in various ways, records of trips and expeditions, reports of discoveries, wars, famine, great events, etc. Photography has become an indivisible part of our lives! Today photography has become popular like never before, everything revolves around photos and videos. We now have a need to show everything we do, we want to share it with our friends, family and people who don't even know our routine. Social networks and technology accelerate our hunger for photography. No one would imagine anyone photographing an egg for breakfast right at the beginning of this incredible discovery. Photographing was expensive, it took a lot, a lot of knowledge and technique, something that could not be wasted with a photo of something so common. I'm not against what people do today, but I miss the romanticism that is gone. To sit down and open a photo album, to stop for a coffee and remember the past. Remember special moments, and to experience all the emotions that contained there. Today we are stuck in this great wave of feeling popular, of having approval from people we don't even know, likes, comments, views, etc. We have become immediate to the extreme. I don’t know if this is really an evolution, I wonder every day if we are on the right track! Before, we were waiting for the arrival of the album, with that cold in our belly to know what was ahead, to recognize each other, to see everything we had recorded in order to remember what we lived. Today we are waiting for an immediate reward, we want everything on time! Has the photograph changed or were we the ones who changed the photograph? Today we do not want to relive what we live, but to show what we are able to live. Is this the fault of the photograph? Or are we getting lost with this fantastic way of expressing ourselves? Are we really using it to its full potential? Do we need to reflect on what we are doing with our lives? Never in history have we reported so many cases of anxiety and depression. Experts say that much of all this is due to the high degree of exposure we are receiving. Let's make one thing very clear, I'm not against social networks, or even people who photograph an egg for breakfast, I've already done it myself, I use social networks. I love everyday photography, I love photographing food and random things. And that's why I'm writing about this subject. It is not photography, it is not the film, it is our vanity, our desire to assert ourselves within our communities, within our social circles that is causing all this confusion. This is called social approval. Maybe our excesses are destroying an entire generation. We have lost the ability to create our desires, to desire what other people are living. Being constantly influenced by those who live in the slavery of daily and immediate content. Many people stopped buying books, to read short excerpts, of shallow content, written by experts trained by their marketing teams. I do not reproach in any way who creates content, it is not about who creates, or about who watches, nor about the quality of the content itself, but about who does not understand what it represents. I hope you understand my rhetoric, I don't want to judge anyone, but to make an alert, a simple reflection, so that all this that we absorb today is not a trigger of sadness but of hope. A lot of people see themselves at rock bottom, believing that their life is dull, because they constantly see people on beautiful walks, laughing, happy, eating, drinking, showing their beautiful houses, their luxury cars, what they earn, what they have, etc. I'm happy to see people happy, but there are people who don't know how to deal with such situations. They start to get into a snowball, they stop seeing that their life can have great value, compared to other people to their own life. Justifying your failure in the success of the other. Blaming yourself for not being able to experience so much. I think social networks are amazing, I think these tools that connect people are fantastic, we now have the opportunity to see the whole world, cultures, gastronomy, architecture, teachings, fun, we have the opportunity to travel to other places in just an instant. We have the chance to show our work, express our opinions, teach and share such important information. It provides all this along with photography and videography. I believe that if we know how to have balance and do not live attached to that alone, we can grow and learn a lot from each other. We have to have filters, dose time, not forgetting that real life is not there. Real life is told with humans disconnected from the internet. That's the other's life and not yours! Pay attention!! Most people don't make a record about something, they want to expose something. There is a difference in registering something and exposing something. Is happiness about exposing everything we do? Many do it for the memory others for the fact that they expose and in their hearts, they know that it was not for one day to remember, but to affirm that they are here or there, eating this or that, buying this or that, in this way we can see that it was not by the record, it was by the desire to appear. We started to use photography and videography in many cases no longer as a tool for recording, or creating arts, but as a tool to feed our ego. Feed vanity, pride and try to override the less favored other. Remembering that not all people do this, and even everything will depend on the interpretation of those who visualize it. If we open our eyes we will see that this fact is more real than we imagine it to be, even at many times I have already done it. I really want to evolve over this dependence that was unconsciously created by the vain dispute of many and ends up contaminating a large part of the population. I'm going to report something that you may have a little idea of what I'm saying. Grandparents' Day, many take a beautiful picture, smiling and with the family together, those who are outside imagine, how beautiful this is, I wanted my family like this too, in reality that was just an image, creating a message of happiness, fraternity and unity. The grandparents stayed as usual in a rocking chair watching their children and grandchildren spend the day with their cell phone in hand. They did not listen to stories, nor did they take the photo albums, did not ask for advice, nor did they pay due attention to those who need it so much. They took pictures of the dishes, the drinks, the dessert, and finally gave a goodbye hug, thinking they were there, but they were not, they were connected with others who did the same thing. I just want to leave a simple reflection on the importance of photography, how we are using it and how we can police ourselves with the use of it. It is something so incredible that today we bought a voice communication device, and the first requirement is to know if it has a good camera, if the device is fast, if it has enough space, we don't even stop to observe that its purpose is to call each other. Start printing your photos, sit together, contemplate that moment lived in the past, happy in the present for having the opportunity to relive everything that has been lived so far. They don't leave their lives summarized in images stuck on any social network. A photograph becomes in fact a photograph when it is printed.