Intelligence in photography

Good news! Now we know what photography is for again. We had come to believe that the art of making beautiful images with a small camera had been invented so that its productions could be consumed free of charge to the point of disgust on social networks.

But now things are getting more serious again with the travelling exhibition "Civilization". Here, photography is intended to serve as a portrait of our species today. L'Œil is quick to point out that previous illustrious initiatives with the same ambition and the best of intentions have ended up being surrounded by a sulphurous aura over time. Like Hergé's Tintin in the Congo.
It is therefore very brave to say what is good and what is bad with black and white and even more so with colour.  

A single photo struggles to achieve such universalist aims. But several can weave a network of convergences and dissonances on the same theme that makes sense. Could photography's salvation lie in collective intelligence?  Why not. But not necessarily in the sense of the "reflection on the world" hoped for by the project's initiators.

After all, do we really expect art photography to seek its value in the illustration of global phenomena such as urban density? That would be like asking today's Kubrick and Fellini to shoot documentaries. Is it not in the search for beauty, which is essentially fleeting, that art must show its intelligence?

The strength of a large number of photographers from all walks of life working on the same subject lies elsewhere than in a similarity of vision from different points of view. It is to be found in the "different photographic treatments" of the same subject, as L'Œil rightly puts it in passing. Photographic art is born when the style assumes and loves itself as subjective in its capture of the world by the lens.

Photo: Vitali: Piscinao de Ramos - 2012