Socrates and Photography

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
(Socrates)

 

 

I really like to think about Photography, and write about it.

Mind you, not because I am who knows who; I am a simple photographer like many others, but I like to reflect on what Photography means for me or for the lives of others.

I don't want to talk about “function”, because it's a word I don't like. I think “impact” is a more appropriate term.

 

Lately I've been reading an old love from the university days, and it made me think again, try to draw lines.

 

Socrates. How he fascinated me.

I still remembered the lessons about Ancient Philosophy from one of the best professors I had had in my entire university career: Prof. Giannantoni, who died in 1998, a few years before my graduation. Peace be upon his soul.

At first it seemed like a suicide to try to follow his lessons to take exams, because I came from the Graphic Designer School, a technical institute, and not from the Scientific or Classical Lyceum like almost all those who followed the lessons of ancient philosophy; I did not know either Greek or Latin.

But as he explained, it made everything so clear and exciting. Two years, two courses and two exams on Plato's “Dialogues”, both passed with full marks and a few words of Greek learned.

 

Above all, the deep love for Socrates. For me the greatest philosopher ever; great Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Kant, and whoever comes to mind, but Socrates remains above all, even if he never taught anything, in fact there is no Socratic system of thought.

There is a Socratic method.

Reading his “dialogues”, beautifully written by his pupil Plato, opens the mind as the knife opens an apple in two parts.

 

 

“On the sixth day of the month of Targelion, in the third year of the LXXVII Olympiad, the Athenians flocked to the main streets to attend the annual procession of the Pharmakoi. [...] That same day, Fenarete, wife of Sofroniscus from the demo of Alopece, gives light a child who is given the name of Socrates.” (Armando Massarenti)

 

It was 470 BC.

It seems that his father taught him the trade of a stonemason, because according to the Athenian law every father had to teach his children a trade.

But there are those who say that Socrates did nothing but philosophize all his life.

In his own way, that is, always dialoguing on any topic, with his proverbial irony.

Physically ugly, with a bad smell and with a wife of terrible fame, Socrates went down in history for several reasons.

First of all, his most famous quote: “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

Then the art of dialogue, brought by him to the highest levels. Reading his dialogues is like watching a chess game that always begins with his characteristic question “what is it...?” (tì esti?), and where he always wins.

It was the part that excited me the most at the time of the study. It really teaches you to think, to take the speaker's sentences and turn them over against the mouth that uttered them.

 

He was a great nuisance, no doubt. Not politically aligned, incorruptible. For this he was at the end condemned of impiety by the Athenian government, in 399 BC, and forced to drink hemlock as described in Plato's last dialogue, that “Apology of Socrates” which is one of the apexes not only of philosophy but of literature of all time.

Despite his innocence he preferred to die, refusing exile as a choice because it would have been an admission of guilt.

And as an anecdote reports, it seems that among his last words there was the answer to a friend who, crying, said to him: “Socrates, you die innocent!”, and the philosopher replied serenely, “Did you prefer me to be guilty?”

 

But what does all this have to do with Photography?

Well, another of Socrates' most famous legacies to our culture is the so-called maieutic method.

The power of his way of thinking and philosophizing has always been that of debating, of asking, precisely because he has never taught anything – after all he has always admitted that he does not know.

So, where do the definitions of the various aspects of human existence come from, from beauty, to justice, to friendship, to politics, which are the themes of every single “dialogue”?

They come from his interlocutors (who give their name to each of the 35 dialogues).

Maieutics explained by Socrates himself in “Theaetetus”: in dialogue with Theaetetus, the philosopher mentions the profession of his own mother, the midwife, saying that it is his own job – maieutic, giving birth to children. The art of pulling out.

 

“My art of maieutic in everything is similar to that of midwives, but it differs in this, that it helps to give birth to men and not women and provides for generating souls and not for bodies. Not only that, but the greatest meaning of this art of mine is that I am able, through it, to discern, with the greatest certainty, whether the mind of the young man gives birth to a fantasy or a lie, or something vital and true.” (Socrates, “Theaetetus”)

 

This was his gift and his biggest secret.

Through dialogue, Socrates was able to pull the truth out of people's souls, without their knowledge.

He did it all his life, in a sublime way, so that his students were among the greatest philosophers in the whole world.

 

Yes, but what does it have to do with Photography?

 

I don't know, I'm here to think, to review the photographs of the masters, to see my modest photos, to feel how my whole life now revolves around Photography, and like me many other people feel the same love and attraction.

The magic of observing printed images that tell; but tell what?

Photography does not create anything, it does not modify, it does not invent. Photography reproduces.

So why does what we see reproduced in an image leave us with awe and wonder, with an intimate sense of beauty that has something different from reality itself?

 

I believe there is a subtle resemblance to Socratic maieutics.

Even the philosopher did not create anything, but by dialoguing he made sure that the truth came out from whoever was in front of him.

And doesn't the photographer do the same thing? With his camera, choosing a portion of reality and starting to dialogue with it, trying to bring out a beauty that is in things and in people but whose presence is not so evident until it's put on paper.

 

How many times have I happened to see amazed women looking at their portraits. As if they saw another for themselves. But the camera is not a magic mirror that models and corrects: it simply reproduces and shows, but if it does so skillfully then it's able to bring out a beauty that people did not know they had.

This applies to landscapes, flowers, architecture and everything on which the lens rests, if with intention.

 

Because there is dialogue and dialogue.

 

We don't always talk with the real interest of listening, of knowing that our interlocutors are inside. Very often we talk but with half the mind intent on thinking about something else, in a sterile way.

Without attention, without love for dialogue.

Philo-sophy, love for wisdom, the one that Socrates felt so deeply that he was now cited by all as the philosopher par excellence.

Dialogue is precisely the dia-logos, a discourse (logos) between (dia), between people.

 

I believe that the fascination that Photography exerts on me as it does on many other people is precisely this maieutic ability.

Each photo is a birth, the birth of the beauty of what we observe, like an epiphany.

But above all it is the birth of the love that we feel for everything that is in front of our eyes.

 

Dedicated to my Prof. Giannantoni...

 

Pantai Teluk Bayu. Teluk Kumbar, Penang. MALAYSIA – 12 October 2019

 

READ ALSO:

• My Five Favorite Books 
• My Five Favorite Poets 

“Socrates – Life, Thought, Testimonies” (Il Sole 24Ore, 2006)
Plato: “All dialogues” (Greek and Latin Classics, Oscar Mondadori, 1993)
Plato: “Apology of Socrates” (Marsilio, 1993)
Gabriele Giannantoni: “What did Socrates say” (Astolabio Ubaldini, 1978)

Italian version