After you have “accepted” the illness (Photography), let's try and briefly analyze the form. According to the old saying "if you understand something you can avoid it" but "if you do not understand it how can you love it"?

Today, its most detrimental form is bulimia. And advertising, as usual, gives us a hand (???!?).

Institutionalizing the concept of taking photos. More and more. Without a reason. It doesn't matter with what. Just take them. This is where we get to the heart of a debate which has no end to it.

I know a photographer. A good professional who praises himself by saying "I know how to take photos even with an iron". Now, aside the increasingly true and involuntary diabolical comparison between cameras and appliances, I ask myself, if this is true, why not buy one or more irons instead of using sophisticated an costly machines, it would be less expensive and easier. Seriously though, the equipment is an early form of awareness towards an approach to lady “Photography”.

It’s a choice that determines its fate. At this point it is opportune to quote a famous phrase of Joachim Spangerberg* “in wealthy countries, consumptions consists in people spending money they don’t have to buy things they do not want (or do not know what do with it – author’s note) to impress people that do not love (us)”.

And suddenly, like magic, somehow, the IPad comes to mind.

Yes, yes, the IPad. Used to take photographs, of course. Here is what a silly subliminal campaign promotes: “the important thing today is to photograph and, more importantly, to show yourself photographing”. Of course, I could make the same comparison using the cell phone with photo camera, in other words, the smartphone. But as soon as we can, we will dedicate a section exclusively to them. But not on the IPad. Taking pictures with an IPad is a blasphemy. At least photographically speaking. It is a modern, sophisticated instrument, with a rapid connectivity, a thousand virtues and which, almost certainly within a couple of years’ time, will substitute all laptops as well as the home and office PCs, to which two poor quality elements have been added; an embarrassment even in comparison to any compact camera that costs 5 to 6 times less.

It is used with pretension and in the most inopportune but always crowded places, preferably, to mimic the act of taking a photograph. Here you have it, besides the qualitative scruples of the means, this, today, is the biggest and most consequential degradation of photography.

And he who says that it is better than nothing should be burned at the stake! (a photographic one of course). The IPad has nothing to do with photography. Definition, quality, grip, perspective, discretion, concentration. This may seem a little too much for the digital natives, and we hope to have space and time for our crusade and woe betide anyone who thinks that this is a discussion against technology and all that is new and better. He did not understand anything. Technology is for progressing not regressing. Even something new needs to connect minimally with the brain. Therefore, tablet for navigating, reading ebook, play solitaire. And if you really do not know exactly what to do with it, use it as a slate to share household messages with your partner. But no photographs, please. They are a completely “different thing”. Please.

PdP

*Spangerberg (Vice-president Think Tank S.E.R.I. Austria assisting European Organizations with sustainable development strategies).