I Am Not the Photographer

Are we truly observing the world directly, or are we merely seeing a conventional or clichéd version of it?

This is our Screen format, in which we explore the medium as it is used today: photography, film, and text. Massimiliano Tommaso Rezza’s series Non sono io il fotografo (I Am Not the Photographer) explores the tension between the photographer’s limited perception and the camera’s ability to reveal unnoticed details, challenging the notion of who truly captures a moment—the photographer or the camera.

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The question that arises from using a camera can be summarized as follows: Are we truly observing the world directly, or are we merely seeing a conventional or clichéd version of it—a reduction to a form that serves to provide the public with an immediate sense of a scene and its objects? Is the camera an objective tool for recording data from the external world, or is it a highly linguistic instrument that transforms visual information into symbolic and semiotic conglomerates?

These images show the photographer’s agency is scrutinized by they themselves, simply by closely examining the outcomes of their photographic actions. To understand how this self-critique unfolds, it’s best to recount the events as they occurred.

I was in Berlin, specifically at Mauerpark, a place where many people gather to enjoy concerts or performances, where music often plays, and performers frequently appear. The afternoon was bathed in the golden light of the setting sun.

Immersed in all this life around me, I had little desire to take photos—being there was already an intense experience. Yet, a kind of graphomania took hold of me, and I lazily snapped five photos of the audience seated on the slope of a hill, which makes the place resemble an arena. I did this without much concentration, as a mechanical and very lazy action.

When I later scanned the film and viewed the photos on my computer, the bleak results led me to reflect. Without even thinking, I started zooming in on the photos, and I realized that the faces of individual people began to emerge.

One by one, the young crowd revealed its names and features. As a photographer and as a person, I had not perceived these people when I was there—I only saw an anonymous mass of heads. In fact, only the collective term “the audience” could be deduced from the picture. But the camera had recorded even the minute details, something beyond human capacity.

The subjects emerged from the anonymous crowd, surfacing to present themselves. Hundreds of different faces and personalities. Who were they? Where are they now? Unbeknownst to me, the camera had managed to reveal all the individuals within the crowd, summoning their presences.

Like ghosts called back from the dead, these faces demanded that I acknowledge the missed opportunity that would have occurred if I had not zoomed into the scanned photos.

I am not the photographer—the camera is. I had relied on a simple, stereotypical idea, a distant and cold model that revealed nothing but a collective label, “the audience.” Yet, thanks to the camera’s attention, we can now see what a crowd conceals—the individuals, caught in a fraction of a second, unaware that they were momentarily trapped in the amber of a photograph, asking to be remembered.