The reality suspending moment

The reality suspending moment manifests itself when the picture puts our certainties in doubt, our beliefs in suspension. In art, the freedom to contradict oneself is the artist's first step to revive creation and the last refuge to avoid sterility.

The breakthrough in art is operated when our certainty about the obvious reality is suspended. When we cannot tell anymore if the seemingly candid moment has become theatrical or not.

Every viewer is capable in an instinctive manner to perceive the metamorphosis, the profound change, in a photograph. A typical example of street art photography includes everything any critic would dream to have so that they would feel proud of decoding and explaining to us (you) the elements which only their bright education in aesthetics has the divine powerto detect. That is: mute dialogues, multiple story-telling, nostalgic looks on humans.

Don't be fooled by such "specialists complex judgements". Either you feel the power of a picture or you don't. No philosophy around a piece of art would help it to survive. And this is valid for both the photographers and the viewers.

Is there an event which is transferred to us through this extremely accurate means of reproduction as is the photographic apparatus? If our answer watching a photograph is yes, then there is nothing more there to see. The artistic added value, is the metamorphose of a life event into a photographic event where the artist-photographer goes beyond it, (s)he captures its essence through her/his vision of life, her/his sensibility and (s)he returns it to us with a meaning and an emotional burden.

Photographers have to do exactly this with the elements they have in front of their camera. They must disconnect all the details which were specific to that time and place and to distill the real event for us. They have to propose their internal world through the interpretation of a candid moment in order to transform it into a symbolism about our ordinary agonies and uneasiness.

Of course, we are always attracted by geometry, diagonals, triangles and repetitive shapes and patterns. But they are not enough if the photograph does not convey the author's obsessive quest for the extraordinary. The surprising gesture which won't wait, and only an alert mind and lens will capture. No matter any rules, taking a photograph only attains its completion with the edition and the final choice of the photographer.