Is photography respected as it deserves?

   © M. Luz Cámara

As a photography enthusiast it is a recurring question in my head; and the conclusion I come to is that it is not. Obviously, I speak in general lines because, of course' it is indeed respected as it deserves in certain places and among certain people; But when you look up, widening your field of vision, I think it is really necessary to take it seriously.

Today we can all generate images with an ease that never occurred in the history of Photography; it is within reach of any hand holding a mobile. This has a positive and a negative side. Positive, because photography appears close and accessible to most people. Negative, because that same ease of access can make it banal.

Use and throw away photographs are not the same as photographs that are born from an educated gaze and the need to materialize internal drives,in images, that sometimes take a lifetime to express. The problem lies when the sea is mixed and stirred, and it is not known how to differentiate between one type of images and the other. A sea, on the other hand, very saturated with images. How can we overcome the collective bundle of images that so much hinder to differentiate between volatile photographs from photographs with weight and substance, well elaborated and originated by the authentic photographer? Well, I think the answer is that with a higher, more extended, more generalized photographic cultural level.

To achieve that high level is everyone's job. Starting with public and private institutions that should bet on the diffusion of photography, but not as a good for a certain audience but conceiving photography as a cultural good for everyone. Promoting very intensive training in schools and also through the media. Realizing that the photography festivals are not mushrooms that are born everywhere with a deceptive media impact and that their organization should be really solid and serious. That fans demand from these institutions more photographic offer and that we are not indifferent to the precariousness of what they offer us. And that the little respect that is sometimes detected by the work of a photographer it is not irrelevant to us, as recently happened in a national newspaper that showed as dead the boy that Pérez Siquier photographed in La Chanca playing dead.

When we will stop the ordinary citizen on the street and he can give us five names of photographers without much thought in response to the question, do you know famous photographers? We will be on the right track to get the authentic respect that Photography deserves; It is everyone's job.