Photography over the Web: an absence of authenticity!

(Foreword) Authenticity can be expressed with emotion, sharing, and generosity but also be opposed to self profit, narcissism and egocentrism.

Back to the infancy of the (large) public Web introduction, it was common that its contain was impregned of naivety, frankness and openminded will to help and share common passions such as photography. The platforms were not really sophisticated but everybody was not caring at all. But those times had come to an end when more commercially oriented people began to take the lead and simply push the basic quality level of the presentation to, let’s say, a more professional one.

If you are involved into the different commercial markets, you know already that what is appearing is often very different from what it is in reality. So, from small pieces to small pieces, the presence of photography as an innocent passion of the art and the tool have changed to a deep promotional race for the manufacturers, the promoters and finally the users. That change can be easily retraced by observing the recent evolution of the "vlogger" phenomena. Even the more popular and basic ones don't try anymore to put totally improvised contains and now they will script, screenplay and strongly edit their video posts.

At the same time, the pictures presented over the Web are more and more post-edited often with important masking, intricated subject montages and profound color and texture transformations. What we are now looking at is more a photo painting interpretation than a picture testimony in direct relation of a chosen moment of reality. And it seems that the general people like better these consumerist products that are an evident cultural standardization of their virtual world.

Who can be respond of that inevitable tendency if not everybody who is demanding for a physical world of certainty, of security, of mutual likeness, etc.? We ask for it, the web creators just answer to it. And that tendency, excuse the expression, is getting viral day after day without any hope to downplay it anytime soon.

I will certainly not blame anybody to try to embellish his/her life. That's human and that's positive. But in doing that for everything, everywhere et at any moment is progressively creating some kind of frustration because there is no perfect model that already works flawlessly. Sure, we aspire to get there but there are so many other interactions, contexts and evolutions to cope with, that is impossible to prevent new situations and learning from them.

The second alarming Web tendency is the apparition of individual and institutional but sophisticated hatred behavior regarding not only political or cultural subjects but also for consuming products which is annoying by their violence carried over simply goods like camera models. If you don’t like, just don't click on! But it is not only that because, in fact, they want to "eliminate" it! They aren't looking for a respectful discussion, they want to destroy the competition. And I am finding this very disturbing because humanity evolution is based greatly on its social interaction not the reverse.

Authenticity and integrity for ourselves, respect and openness for our community and our society are values that need to be translated through all our communication channels and in particular over the Web which is now occupied so much of our daily attention. We have to elevate ourselves from that another infancy that is polluting the actual public relations and discoverer the beauty of differences among us.