ISO80 Studio

𝐀 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲
THE CIRCUS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
At times, I have the distinct feeling that contemporary photography has become a vast circus. Not because there are too few photographers, but perhaps because there are simply too many of us—and, more importantly, because we are producing an extraordinary number of images without stopping to ask ourselves, before we press the shutter, one very simple question: why should this photograph exist?
We now have access to extraordinary cameras, lenses capable of revealing things the human eye can barely perceive, remarkable sensors, film, sophisticated software, artificial intelligence, and post-production tools that, only a few years ago, would have seemed like science fiction. And yet, paradoxically, the more our technical possibilities have expanded, the more our photographs seem to resemble one another.
This is perhaps one of the most interesting contradictions of our time: we have achieved an almost unprecedented degree of technical freedom while simultaneously creating a new form of visual conformity.
We open Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or any other platform, and we encounter thousands of images that appear to have been made by the same photographer. The names change, the biographies change, the cameras hanging from people’s shoulders change, but the visual language remains remarkably similar. The same pursuit of perfect light, the same colours, the same contrasts, the same conception of beauty, the same construction of the image, the same imperative to make everything immediately appealing.
A photograph no longer needs to surprise us. It merely needs to be recognisable.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest problems.
Photography was also born to show us what we did not want to see: to bear witness, to document, to expose, to question. It became a means of entering places we would not normally look and bringing those realities before the eyes of people who might otherwise prefer to ignore them. Today, however, photography often seems afraid of causing discomfort.
A photograph of protest or social injustice can divide an audience. A difficult photograph can provoke negative reactions. An ambiguous photograph can be misunderstood. A politically or socially uncomfortable photograph can cost us followers. So it is far easier to photograph something that everyone can appreciate.
The problem is that when a photograph is conceived from the outset with the audience's reaction in mind, it risks ceasing to be photography and becoming a form of commercial communication.
The like, in this sense, has become a kind of moral light meter. It tells us whether we have correctly exposed—not the photograph, but our own need for approval.
We have begun to photograph in order to be seen, forgetting that the photographer’s task should be, first and foremost, to see.
And there is an enormous difference between the two.
To see means accepting responsibility. It means deciding what to reveal and what to leave outside the frame. It means remaining in front of reality long enough to allow something to happen. It means accepting that what we see may not please us—and that, perhaps, it will not please others either.
A truly free photograph does not necessarily need to be beautiful.
It needs to be necessary.
It may be imperfect, raw, uncomfortable, even technically flawed. It may have terrible light, a questionable composition, or a decisive moment that conforms to none of the conventions found in contemporary photography manuals. But if there is a thought within that image, a question, a wound, a contradiction—or simply something that forces us to stop—then that photograph has already achieved far more than an impeccably exposed and chromatically flawless image ever could.
Post-production, too, has become part of this broader process of visual homogenisation. Not because altering a photograph is inherently wrong: photography has always involved interpretation, selection, and construction. The problem begins when even interpretation itself becomes predictable.
There are now such deeply established aesthetic conventions that we can often guess how an image has been processed before we even know who took it. Perfectly smoothed skin, controlled shadows, recovered highlights, colours either desaturated or intensified according to the fashion of the moment, dramatic skies, cinematic atmospheres. Reality is constantly being corrected until it resembles the idea we have already decided to have of reality.
It is curious: we seem to be afraid of manipulating the truth, yet remarkably unafraid of making it all look the same.
And while we continually debate what is ethical, appropriate, acceptable, or publishable, we risk forgetting that photography was never meant to be entirely harmless.
Of course, there are boundaries. There are responsibilities. There is a fundamental obligation to respect the people we photograph. But responsibility should not become neutralisation.
The photographer does not necessarily have to be a neutral arbiter of reality. A photographer can also take a position, ask questions, expose contradictions, and reveal a wound without turning it into spectacle.
The problem is not photographing the world.
The problem is having something to say about it.
And here we arrive at perhaps the most ironic part of the story: we have never been surrounded by so many photographs, and yet we have never been so poor in necessary images.
We produce continuously. We photograph coffee, journeys, sunsets, concerts, backstage moments, weddings, streets, dogs, plates of food, bodies, ourselves while photographing something else. Then we select, correct, develop, scan, retouch, publish—and wait.
We wait for the verdict.
One heart.
Two hearts.
Fifty.
A hundred.
A thousand.
And when they arrive, we feel that the photograph has worked.
But worked for what?
To tell a story? To bear witness? To move someone? To make someone think? To create a meaningful exchange? Or simply to feed the algorithm?
Perhaps the real crisis of photography is not technological at all.
It is a crisis of necessity.
We have confused the possibility of taking a photograph with the necessity of taking one.
And because anyone can now produce images, we have arrived at a remarkable paradox: photography has never been more democratic, and at the same time it has never been more homogeneous.
Everyone can speak, yet an increasing number of people are saying the same thing.
Everyone can show the world, yet increasingly they are showing the same world.
Everyone can own a camera, but owning a camera does not necessarily mean having something to say.
Perhaps what we need to recover is something very old and very difficult: courage.
The courage to take a photograph that may not be liked. The courage to publish it knowing that someone may challenge it. The courage to photograph an uncomfortable reality without turning it into po*******hy of suffering. The courage to leave a question unanswered. The courage to accept that not everyone needs to agree with us.
Because a photograph that creates a discussion can be far more alive than a photograph that receives ten thousand likes.
A photograph that places two people face to face, even when they hold opposing views, may have a far more meaningful social function than a thousand perfect images that pass across a screen without leaving a trace.
Perhaps we should stop asking whether a photograph is beautiful and start asking whether it is alive.
Whether it contains something that can withstand the endless scroll.
Whether, after seeing it, a question remains.
Whether it makes us look back.
Whether it makes us angry, think, argue, remember.
Whether it brings us into contact with one another.
Because this is the paradox: in an age in which we can communicate with almost anyone, photography risks becoming one of the loneliest tools we possess. We publish before thousands of people, and yet we often fail to encounter anyone in any meaningful sense.
And so, yes, perhaps photography has become a circus.
There are the photographers, the artists, the curators, the influencers, the algorithms, the juries, the likes, the trends, the exhibitions, the awards, the cameras, the presets—and even photographers photographing other photographers while they photograph.
The tent is enormous, and the show goes on.
But perhaps, every now and then, it would be useful to turn off the lights, silence the audience, and step outside the circus.
To take a camera and go in search of something that has not already been decided for us.
Something we do not yet know how to photograph.
Something we do not yet know how to explain.
Something that perhaps nobody will like.
But something that, for whatever reason, we needed to photograph.
Because, in the end, a photograph should not ask:
“How many likes can I get?”
It should have the courage to ask:
“What would happen if nobody pressed like?”
And perhaps it is precisely with that question that photography could begin again.

___DUE DI NOTTE___
A final attempt to communicate one’s pain before “leaving.” Words pour spontaneously from a restless, agitated body toward another—the listener’s—which remains still, calm, heavy, and, given the hour, very sleepy.
This is what appears. We are witnessing a soul on the edge—one that does not truly wish to tell its story, or at least not through the literal meaning of words, but rather through the *way* those words are expressed.
This is what appears. The other person is bewildered, left without a foothold, and begins to regret having rushed to the side of the one who sent out the SOS. This failure to communicate triggers moments that are by turns comic and tragic, yet it also serves as a powerful lever to upend what merely “appears” to be the case.
Created and performed by
Francesco Pennacchia and Luca Serrani
Lighting and stage objects
Gianluca Balducci
Production
Teatro Patalò
Residencies
Fuor di Teatro, Ancona
CURA Centro Umbro Residenze Artistiche, Spello (PG) – curated by Ge.Ci.Te.
Teatro Sociale Novafeltria (RN)
© 2026 Dorin Mihai for Le città visibili Festival. All rights reserved.

𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐤
Concezione e regia Enrico Battarra / Collettivo Il Nido
Con Enrico Battarra, Gaia Stacchini
Voci Enrico Battarra e Lisa Lippi Pagliai
Assistente alla regia Aurora Rò
Dialogo su drammaturgia Emanuele Pratelli, Adele Ariola
Dialogo sui costumi Silvia Spaggiari
Tecnica del suono Aurora Rò
Realizzazione oggetti R.A. Falegnameria ,Matilde Magli, Luca Battarra, Rita Ferraro
Produzione Collettivo Il Nido
Con il sostegno di L’arboreto-Teatro Dimora | Centro di Residenza Emilia-Romagna, Manomesse, Dune-Arti Paesaggi Utopie, Movimento Centrale Danza&Teatro, Circolo Pennabilli, Laboratori Permanenti/Residenza Artistica Sansepolcro
Le città visibili festival
© 2026 Dorin Mihai. All rights reserved.

https://abagofstories.com/give-the-photo-back/

Give the Photo Back A small printer takes almost no room in a travel bag. What it can change, however, is the direction of photography itself: an image no longer travels only with the person who made it.