Photography, Utopia?

   © Guillermo Labarca

Faced with the horrors we see every day, multiple wars in the Middle East, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Myanmar, Nigeria, to which are added local conflicts such as Haiti, among others. To the abuses against freedom, countless and permanent, with inoperative or corrupt judicial systems, in the face of a wave of corruption that is being introduced into the powers of the State. Is what we contemplate every day that some, the luckiest of us, can see from a distance synonymous with indifference? Shouldn't we do something to help stop this escalation of evil? Wouldn't we, in this magazine, have to report, denounce, take a position on these and many other events? 

Pertinent question, to which we answer that there are already photographers who do this work, inform and in doing so denounce. Some do it masterfully and often taking enormous risks. But does this exempt us from also contributing to showing these realities? No, not at all, but our contribution follows other channels. 

 The photos that we show here and those that we have been selecting for the magazine for 55 issues, which are many years, aim to show who and how we are human beings, at least one aspect of us, which is the desire to be better. Through technical perfection, revealing aspects of reality that we would not have known otherwise, opening ourselves to the beauty of a face or a landscape, surprising ourselves with unusual situations, getting to know unknown places, habits and customs, By introducing doubts and new information about places and people that we thought we knew, we intend to expand the repertoire and information we have and thus be more complete as individuals. 

 Intentions, utopian thoughts? Of course yes, photography shares utopian traits with the other arts. Utopia is intertwined with personal or social ideals of a better world, photography, even when it is being critical or denouncing, is postulating, implicitly or explicitly, an ideal, a desirable situation. In this way, utopia forces the limits of existing reality and is identified with the desire for a better world. 

Utopia is a driver of social progress, it raises the demand to realize an ideal, as a rejection of defeatism and fatalistic realism. Cioran recognizes as positive this rational faith of transforming what exists in reality with something potential, the "fascination of the impossible", without which there is a condemnation to live in sclerosis and routine. It is ultimately a rejection of the state of things and a conformist determinism. 

 Even though More's original Utopia takes place on an island, to preserve its pristine character and defend itself from external contamination, that is not what we want here, quite the contrary. By making known the photos that we show here we want them to go beyond the borders imposed by the device where they are shown and whoever sees them glimpses a better reality and hopefully generates doubts and knowledge. 

 We know that our contribution is modest but, at the same time, ambitious. Finally, we know and empathize with those who suffer so much injustice but, at the same time, we maintain the hope (perhaps utopian) that we can be better.