When the Image Is No Longer Enough – Eyeshot

When the Image Is No Longer Enough

There are invites which can be additionally obligations. When VOICES – European Festival of Media Freedom & Journalism requested us to curate an exhibition on the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (10–12 March), the request was to not “fill a space with beautiful images,” however to contemplate what function pictures can play in a spot that, for 3 days, speaks about media freedom, disinformation, and the way forward for journalism. In a pageant designed to deliver collectively residents, journalists, and students, I couldn’t merely choose “powerful” images: I needed to determine what we must always ask of journalistic pictures at the moment.

From this got here the idea: to make use of photojournalism not as an illustration of the panels, however as an act of accountability. Not the picture that palms you a ready-made reality, however the one which stops simply earlier than doing so, leaving you with the messy work of doubt. We selected to take away layers of rationalization slightly than add them: no ethical path, no right reply ready on the finish of the room. Only images that don’t shut off which means, that resist simplification, that don’t method you as an viewers to be “convinced,” however as a gaze prepared to imagine a part of the burden.

To help this concept, we wanted authors who, within the historical past of photojournalism, have already challenged the way in which we have a look at the world. The exhibition will function names which have formed a long time of documentary pictures: main figures from Magnum Photos and VII Photo Agency, and photographers similar to Susan Meiselas, Philip Jones Griffiths, Letizia Battaglia, able to reworking political occasions, wars, revolutions, and collective wounds into photos that don’t fade straight away. They will not be there as a “parade of masters,” however as a result of their work demonstrates that pictures can refuse shortcuts, even when historical past calls for simplification.

Curating this exhibition, for me, means shifting the middle of gravity: now not solely onto the photographed scene, however onto what occurs between the picture and the individual taking a look at it. In a pageant that seeks to defend freedom of knowledge in a Europe stuffed with noise and manipulation, what pursuits me is that those that enter the room don’t really feel merely like “well-informed spectators,” however implicated contributors. I don’t need them to depart with the sensation that they’ve understood every little thing. If they depart with extra questions than that they had after they entered—if they start to ask themselves what they really do, every single day, after they scroll by means of photos like these on their screens, then maybe pictures, at the least right here, has returned to doing its job.

VOICES – European Festival of Media Freedom & Journalism

Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief