On January 7, 2005, my professional life changed forever. From that day, from that morning, there would be a before and an after. I had two choices: continue working in marketing as a consultant, or become an artist. There was a third, highly unlikely option: do both at the same time. I chose the third, without really realizing it.
In the early years, being a consultant was paramount; as an artist, I was completely unaware, as well as self-taught. So I practiced as a photographer to support communications consulting, during a period of total overlap between analog and digital photography. An objective difficulty within an epochal revolution. As before, I chose to do photography both digitally and analogically, trying to take the best of both without investing significant sums. Not easy: I was struggling with the Nikon scanner in the years when image post-production software was prehistoric.
I began to write stories with words. Novels, tales, visions, utopias. Over more than twenty years, a dozen narrative works emerged, which I made available digitally.
Meanwhile (2009), most marketing techniques were disappearing, and other tools were emerging: Web 2.0, apps, social networks, YouTube and virality, Google ADV, influencing, elevator pitches. The mobile phone became the Magic Mirror of fairy tales. Products became virtual, stories with very short lives. The old marketer began to disappear, and the self-taught artist became more aware. In 2018, I set up a small-scale photography studio. It was a frustrating period (no financial results) but rich in experimentation. I was obsessed with the mystery of the image-word duality. I attempted to transform the word into an image through lettering first, and then handwriting. Unfortunately, every attempt seemed to lead to a dead end. They seemed close, almost touching, but suddenly they diverged. It took time. A few years. Finally, I discovered it wasn’t a bipolarity, but an iterative triad: image, story, word.
A successful image evokes an emotion that ties in with a personal story. A fact, an event, but also a fantasy, a dream. Subjective, therefore, ‘in billions.’ All of this can be expressed in words. However, all it takes is a caption, a word, or a phrase, for the multitude of stories to collapse (as a Wave Function would do in Quantum Mechanics) to leave only a few alive. And all it takes is a few more words to write, and the story becomes univocal, valid for any viewer, moving from the enormous multitude of stories to a single one.
The same is true in reverse: you can start from a complex story, for example a novel or a 120-minute film, to arrive at a single scene-image that summarizes it in the viewer’s mind. Each viewer can choose one from the billions of still images in the film and make it their own poster.
I also understood that history, which lies halfway between image and word, is in the mind of the observer or reader; that is, it is “embodied.” Without the Mind, without human flesh, image and word remain distinct. It is Man, with his ideas, stories, and body, who is able to synthesize image and word through history—his own, or one valid for All.
Finally, it is the Mind that imagines images and stories; everything can start from here, creating stories and images. It also works with AI.
Let’s look at these words.
Single, Multitude, Stories, Everyone, Mind, but also Ideas, Preconceptions, Memes. All of this is Politics, of course. And since I used the word “Dream” above, let’s also talk about Utopia.
At this point we have a World.
We could delve deeper into it, delve into Philosophy, History, Politics, Psychology, and many other scientific or pseudo-scientific “disciplines.”
Is it necessary?
No.
To have full and conscious knowledge of it, to assume full awareness, to be able to discern it all and put it together, a superficial perspective is required. One must “be” superficial. Like flat stones skipping across the water, propelled by a skillful throw of the arm and wrist. Embodied, indeed. Only a superficial Mind, whether it has achieved this through the depths of a discipline or simply by exploring creation, can truly constitute a pinnacle of this triad.
Research has arrived here.
Beyond, there is only Mystery, the same as always, inviolable.
And the World?
It’s there, waiting to be photographed, expressed in words, narrated, in short. The most beautiful profession in the world. The third street of January 7, 2005.
