{"id":5737,"date":"2025-12-28T03:53:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T03:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/igormattio.com\/?p=5737"},"modified":"2025-12-28T04:01:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T04:01:14","slug":"safety-as-aesthetic-contemporary-photography-form-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/igormattio.com\/en\/safety-as-aesthetic-contemporary-photography-form-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety as Aesthetic | Contemporary Photography, Form & Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bored of Very Serious Photography?<\/h4>

Nothing on your skin.<\/h5>

When I look at much of the \u201cin-vogue<\/strong>\u201d contemporary photography, I don\u2019t feel rejection. I feel boredom. A deep boredom\u2014not born of any intolerance for the new, but from the oppressive sense of recognizing the same script over and over, performed in the same flat voice, with the same impeccable emotional distance. It isn\u2019t visual fatigue: it\u2019s the feeling of watching a repeated exercise\u2014correct, polished, already familiar.<\/p>

It strikes me as a kind of photography that has made safety its only dogma. It takes no risks, it doesn\u2019t expose the person behind the camera, it doesn\u2019t truly involve the viewer. It\u2019s as if an unwritten code of conduct had been established\u2014an antiseptic neutrality, a textbook detachment, a refinement that must be conceptual before it is visual\u2014and everyone, to be admitted into the game, repeats it with minimal, insignificant variations. It isn\u2019t a language: it\u2019s a shield. A perimeter so controlled it suffocates any breath.<\/p>

For me, that safety is the opposite of tension. It completely lacks that electricity of \u201cthis could have gone wrong,\u201d the smear, the imbalance, the formal or emotional risk that makes an image alive\u2014and dangerous. Everything is smoothed out, premeditated, over-calculated. A smoothness that doesn\u2019t come from rigor, but from fear of making mistakes. Often the only thing truly well written is the wall text, while the frame remains mute, composed, obedient.<\/p>

I recognize the mastery of the discourse. It\u2019s often erudite, laden with references, perfectly aligned with contemporary art talk. But too many of these works strike me as conceptually anemic: they announce grand themes\u2014the Anthropocene, identity, borders\u2014only to illustrate them with interchangeable images that could support almost any argument, as long as they\u2019re paired with the right statement. The idea resides entirely in the text, never in the act of seeing.<\/p>

The result is an elegant but empty photography, far more interested in positioning itself correctly within the system\u2014galleries, grants, criticism\u2014than in getting its hands dirty with the visceral complexity of the world, of history, or of the body. This isn\u2019t an occasional drift; it\u2019s a precise mode of operation. It\u2019s an operation of branding, not of vision.<\/p>

What I find most symptomatic is the automatic suspicion\u2014almost a conditioned reflex\u2014toward the \u201cbeautiful,\u201d toward form that takes openly responsibility. As if pursuing a powerful composition, an equilibrium of forms that cuts, an aesthetic choice that isn\u2019t understatement, were immediately suspect\u2014\u201cretro,\u201d not intelligent. I\u2019m not talking about decoration, but about form as a position.<\/p>

For me the matter is simple: form matters\u2014deeply. A rigorous composition isn\u2019t ornament; it is embodied visual thought, the way you take a stance\u2014physically\u2014before your subject. Abandoning the search for powerful form in the name of a supposed neutrality or a fashionable anti-aestheticism isn\u2019t liberating at all: it isn\u2019t renunciation, it\u2019s surrender. It\u2019s adherence to another codified style, no more honest or authentic than the others. It\u2019s deadpan elevated to clich\u00e9.<\/p>

My suspicion is that much contemporary photography has institutionalized boredom, transforming it into a legitimate aesthetic. As if the absence of risk had been mistaken for maturity, as if the only \u201cserious\u201d way to speak about the present were to be flat, detached, emotionally drained. A realism without reality.<\/p>

I want to feel that the photographer is there. That they\u2019re risking something\u2014in the moving body, in the gaze that misframes, in the blinding light, in the composition that asserts itself with force even at the cost of being imperfect, excessive, out of place. I want the evidence of a choice, not the mimicry of a code. This is the risk I\u2019m interested in taking\u2014even if it excludes.<\/p>

If that means standing outside the perimeter of what is considered acceptable, I\u2019m more than fine with it. I would far rather a kind of photography that tries to say something through the power of its forms, even if it limps, than an impeccable perfection that, once the gallery lights go out, leaves absolutely nothing on your skin.<\/p>

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