La fotografia tra Arte e Scienza sociale. Arturo Ghergo, Bob Richardson, Bettina Rheims

Abstract

What does the photography in contemporary visual culture?
In the ever increasing interference between art and society, photography took over, as you can see, a leading role in what Enrico Menduni defines the process of "picture show", especially if it isconsidered in its close relationship with the advertising industry. However you cannot ignore the fact that, being closely bound to functions that is responsible, photography is also a social practice.
These considerations have a concrete response in the contemporary art. Arturo Ghergo (1901-1959), Bob Richardson (1928-2005) and Bettina Rheims (1952) are artists with very different poetics that while making photographs on commission (for movies, advertising, fashion and magazines) told through pictures their time (and the aspects of reality that have characterized) reaching high and recognized results of artistic and aesthetic value. They are just three of the many photographers who put us in front of the hybrid status of photography as "a medium [...] inextricably linked to two aspects: aesthetic and sociological" (Dorfles 2012).
Discussions on the border between photography-craft and photography-art, which long have marked and restricted the destiny of many photographers, today finally appear anachronistic, but not entirely overcome. We see more and more often a dissolution of identity between the two areas with important examples of the deep connection of the dichotomy between art and social aspects.
If it is true that art has always told, interpreted and reflected on the reality that is part, what seems interesting to highlight is the fact that the impact on the collective imaginary that new visual media, photography in primis, have had and continue to have increasingly appears to have no background. Therefore, art has never been so close to life.