Today’s post is not a story in pictures, it’s not an article where I show you something I did, but rather a reflection that I want to share with you.
A couple of days ago, I found myself thinking about what my job is, which role has a photographer in a society like the one we live in.
As we all know, in the world where we are immersed, reality and virtuality are extremely connected, so much so that often they flow into each other.
We are overwhelmed by images where immediacy seems to be the first necessity. Armed with our phones, we take pictures to post them immediately on our social networks. We do not enjoy the moment, we are too focused on showing others what we are doing.
We’re slowly losing the sense of waiting. So many times, photographers (but not only) are asked shortly after taking pictures when they are ready as if it were a matter of seconds.
This sense of suddenness, the speed at which we pretend to have things, creates a void.
An emptiness of emotions, of values, of memories. Getting things as quickly as possible, makes us lose the value of waiting.
Waiting for something makes the emotions, the thoughts, settle in us. Waiting to see a photograph that someone has taken of us, will then bring an amplified effect in us, because at the moment in which we first waited, we had time to live the emotions of the moment, to make them our own.
Taking in our hands, touching the printed photo, in retrospect, has the ability to make us relive the moment, to reconnect with our emotions, with our experience. When we get a photograph immediately, we can’t give it the same value that it would have had otherwise if we had had to wait for it.
Let’s not lose the value of waiting.
