In the 1840’s, when photography was invented, a few art critics declared: “Now painting is dead”.
Since painters had lost the portrait business and because of the close relationship between reality and this new medium, painting went on to die quietly and rose from the ashes of truth to experience romanticism, surrealism and abstract expressionism! The range of expressions on contemporary canvases is broader than ever.
In the second half of the 1990’s digital photography started to shake our convictions: “Is photography telling us the truth?” The manipulations allowed by digital technology and the computer make it possible for everyone to erase the dismissed lover or the unwanted wrinkles, just like the politicians and advertisers have been doing for quite a while. The relationship between the truth and reality is, today, at least tenuous if not erased. Photography, like any medium is now free from the ropes that once bounded it to the outside reality. The artists can now fully explore the truth within; they can express themselves and show us their inner realities.