We all know that photography is a complex activity with multiple readings. A photograph can be a work of art, an official document, a testimony of a situation, a path of introspection and self-knowledge, a simple memory or a recreational activity. And we all know that, in most situations, it is not a direct reflection of reality, but rather a construction. An image hybridizes between a reflection of reality and the decisions of its creator.

But a photograph, even if not true, must be credible and if it is not, it is difficult for us to see it as such.

To an image that does not allow to be believed, we hardly give it the value of photography, surely we define it as digital art, illustration, … or other concepts. But just as we know the above, we are aware that the photographic image has an enormous evocative power, observing a photograph in which we or our environment is the protagonist is a direct path to recall the content of the image.

We are also aware of the value of photographic images as normalizers of a reality. The more we see “something” that we consider credible, the more we make it habitual and the norm.

If we add these aspects, where what we see more habitually we normalize it and that in the future, today’s images will be the door of evocation to our past, we can ask ourselves: What is happening and what will happen, when these increasingly altered images, in more and more areas are the creators of normality and of our personal memory?

Let’s take, for example, a self-portrait or selfie that we take today with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and the improvement filters of our Smartphone and that in 20 years will be the element with which we will recover our memory of how we were and compare it with the image that returns us not an improved AI but with the mirror.

On these aspects of photographic creation we invite you to reflect, learn and deepen in the VIII Photographic Conference of Castell Platja d’Aro.