Counter Point – «The Tyranny of Photographs»

There is something beguiling about photography. Our lives are surrounded by it, and as if by magic we are subsumed into an ever-growing flow of photographic images. Photographs are meant to be a truthful representation of the world around us. But isn’t there something tyrannical about this magical illusion of truthfulness?

Is the camera an instrument of the tyrant? Is the camera the place, where the soul is captured and imprisoned?

There is something at once seductive and deceptive about photography. We are drawn to photography’s ability to capture the moment. Photographs are meant to be indices of the world; they are thought to be evidence of something, and the best can even capture emotion. It is enticing to regard photography as the embodiment of realism.

Having studied photography and having spent my career in the world of cinematography, I am not convinced by this overwhelming veneer of realism. Photographic images are an optical illusion irrespective of whether they are still or moving images. We are surrounded by photographs; we are moved by them; we are deceived by them. We manipulate them, and we are manipulated by them. We are in some ways trapped in a circle of deceptive manipulation.

In my installation, you are invited to go inside the camera, where you will be stripped of the constraints of realism. In the camera – to see the picture – you will become part of the image: and then, perhaps, you’ll be freed from the «tyranny of photographs».

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thanks to my family for their support and patience, to Bea Alves and all my colleagues at work, to Ghazaleh Ebrahimi for layout design of my thesis, and to MusouBlack Europe.