Talking about photography

During the last lesson, which was quite eventful, you gained experience working with each other.

Aglaia and Leonardo, weren't only the “objects” of your shootings, but also the subjects. They not only exhibited themselves but I would say the offered themselves.

Not just simple puppets, they even in some ways directed the shooting.  This was the interesting thing.

As in a “game” between two people pulling a cord between themselves and creating as much tension as possible without breaking it, so photography allows in its action a growth of conscience of the self and the other.

In Italian the work of the photographer is called “servizio fotografico”. So very different in english where the expression used is “photoshoot”.

I have to say that in this case the italian expression is much closer to the sense that I love to give to the work of photographing.

The quality of the relationship between who photographs and who is being photographed is implicit  in the expression “Servizio”.

The photographer offers himself so that whoever is being photographed benefits. The photographer does not present himself  as the executioner of a “ritual”, but rather as the person who allows the subject to present themselves in such a way that their self awareness is increased. To observe yourself, to measure yourself, to acknowledge yourself and to know yourself.

That is why I like the expression “SERVIZIO fotografico”.

The expression “Shoot”,is surely more apt for a type of photography in which the photographer takes the aim; it has a very “military” ring to it.

Even Henry Cartier Bresson used to say that a photograph: “is to put in the same line of sight the mind, the eyes and the heart. A way of living”. An approach to the whole context that has certainly produced some masterpieces, but to which I personally feel remote.