Provini. Sull'enunciazione fotografica

Abstract

Before the shutter release subtracts a certain fragment of existence from its continuous becoming, producing that "that-has-been" that Barthes recognized as the very essence of photographic art, the world is in front of the photographer with all its complexity: the infinite things that populate it, the infinite points of view from which it is possible to look at them, the infinite moments that mark their existence. In front of the man with the camera, an infinite number of photographs unfolds, many of which, unfortunately, completely incapable of provoking that jolt you get when an image is really good. How is it possible to describe and analyze photographic production? To think about it, the photographer's thought does not remain confined in the unfathomable depths of his mind. In fact, it determines further shots, proofs with which the artist goes in search of his own gaze, which remain fixed in those texts of uncertain status that are the proofs. "A sheet of proofs is like the notebook of a psychoanalyst" wrote Cartier-Bresson. If we want to semantically reconstruct the photographer's gaze then, it is through the analysis of these strange photographs that we must start.