There are photographs that are technically flawless, carefully constructed and capable of immediately catching the eye. And then there are others, perhaps less perfect, that stay with us long after we have stopped looking at them.

The difference is not always easy to explain.

Perhaps it lies in the sense of necessity we perceive behind certain images. We feel that the person who made them was not simply standing before something worth photographing, but had a reason for doing so.

Today, making a good photograph is, at least from a technical point of view, much easier than it once was. Our tools help us enormously, and they will continue to do so more and more. I do not believe there is anything to fear in this: photography has always evolved alongside technology, and every generation has had possibilities that the one before it did not possess.

But precisely as technique becomes more accessible, an old question takes on even greater importance: why do we photograph?

Not every photograph needs to tell a story. Not every image needs to carry a message, and I do not believe a photographer must necessarily have some great truth to deliver to the world. That would be asking too much and would probably produce far more rhetoric than good photography.

Having something to say can mean much less — and, for that very reason, much more.

It can be a question we keep trying to answer. A place we feel compelled to return to. A person we are trying to understand. A memory we do not want to lose. It may even be something we cannot yet explain, but which persistently draws our lens in the same direction.

It is when this sense of necessity begins to emerge that, perhaps, a collection of photographs can become a project.

And this is where things become more complicated.

Because having many beautiful photographs does not necessarily mean having a good project. There comes a point when we need the courage to leave out a successful image because it does not belong to what we are trying to say, and perhaps keep a less striking one because without it something would be missing.

The same is true when those images become a book.

A photobook should not simply be a place in which to gather our best photographs. It is a space where images begin to speak to one another. Their sequence creates relationships, pauses and echoes. One photograph changes the way we read the one before it and prepares us for the one that follows. At that point, choosing also means letting go.

Perhaps this is one of the most difficult parts of an author’s work: understanding when to stop asking, “Is this a beautiful photograph?” and start asking, “Does this photograph really need to be here?”

It is a question that, in our own way, we too try to ask whenever we encounter a new photographer or a new project.

Because Pixel Photo Magazine was not created simply out of a desire to show good photographs. We want to understand what holds them together, what kind of vision gave rise to them, what question compelled someone to make them.

Technique can be learned. Tools change. Trends disappear and return, often under new names.

But in the end, when we stand before a photograph, something surprisingly simple remains: someone chose to stop right there, in front of that particular thing, at that particular moment, and photograph it.

Before asking whether that photograph is beautiful, perhaps we should ask why it exists.

And sometimes, in the answer, we finally begin to recognise an author.

Marcello Pitardi
Editor – Pixel Photo Magazine