Photography Today: Between Image, Noise and Meaning

There has never been a time when creating images was easier.And rarely has it been harder to create images that truly mean something.

We live surrounded by photographs.Endless, polished, spectacular.Images designed to impress for a second, to scroll past, to be replaced immediately by something louder, sharper, more extreme.

The pace is relentless.The rhythm imposed.The attention span compressed.

In a system that rewards speed, repetition and immediate impact, photography is increasingly shaped by what performs best — not by what needs to be said.

The problem, however, is not technology.It is not social media alone.And it is certainly not artificial intelligence.

The real problem is the growing absence of vision.

The Illusion of Epic

Contemporary photography often confuses scale with depth. Bigger skies. Stronger contrasts. More dramatic light. More saturation. More movement. Everything is built to feel epic.And yet, very little remains.

The same locations repeat endlessly.The same compositions.The same color palettes.The same emotional cues, pushed until exhaustion.Epic imagery without narrative is just visual noise. It overwhelms, but it does not stay. When spectacle becomes the goal, meaning quietly disappears.

The Social Machine

Social platforms did not invent this problem, but they accelerated it beyond control. Endless feeds.Animated carousels.Looping reels.Visual gimmicks repeated to nausea. Images are no longer meant to be contemplated. They are meant to perform. The rhythm is relentless.Produce, publish, repeat.Yesterday’s image is already irrelevant today.

In this system, depth becomes a liability.Silence becomes invisible.Complexity becomes friction.

What survives is what is immediate, simplified, easily consumable — and easily forgotten.

Photography Was Never Neutral

There is a persistent myth that photography is, or should be, a neutral document of reality. It never was. Every photograph is an interpretation.From the choice of lens to the moment of exposure, from framing to post-processing, every step is a decision.

Even the masters often invoked as symbols of “pure photography” were never neutral observers.They shaped light, contrast, mood and atmosphere to express a personal vision of the world.

The issue is not manipulation.The issue is manipulating without intention.

When technique replaces thought, the image becomes empty — no matter how perfect it looks.

AI as a Mirror, Not a Shortcut

Artificial intelligence did not break photography. It exposed it. AI is an accelerator.It amplifies what already exists If there is no vision, it accelerates emptiness.If there is no direction, it multiplies clichés.

But when there is a coherent world, a clear aesthetic and a strong inner logic, AI becomes just another instrument — no different in principle from a camera, a brush, or a darkroom .AI does not create meaning. It reveals whether meaning was there to begin with.

This is uncomfortable.And that is precisely why it matters.

From Images to Worlds

What is missing today is not quality.Nor realism.Nor technical mastery.

What is missing is continuity of thought.

Images disconnected from a larger vision remain isolated gestures.Images born from a coherent world — aesthetic, emotional, symbolic — begin to speak to each other.

They form a language. Less output.More coherence.Less performance.More intention. This need to slow down, to reconnect images to meaning, is what drives my work today — and what led to the creation of projects that move beyond the single photograph.

A Position, Not a Conclusion

Photography does not need fewer tools. It needs more responsibility.

Not by rejecting technology,but by demanding intention from those who use it.

Not by chasing visibility,but by building worlds that can be entered, explored, and remembered.

This is not a conclusion. It is a position.

Everything that follows starts here.

This text introduces a broader visual and narrative research.