We find ourselves at a singular point in the development of visual civilization. “ON THE FURTHEST PROMONTORY OF THE CENTURIES”, as Marinetti might have put it 115 years ago, because a moment has probably arrived when we should revise our understanding of the images of the world we create today - or perhaps merely participate in creating.
Let us look back, in synthesis, at the process through which the present image of the world was formed. After two hundred years, photography, thanks to the mobile phone with a camera, has become an everyday practice available to almost everyone. No one remembers anymore that one once had to go to a photographer who, with magical tricks and equipment requiring a special initiation, fixed our appearance “forever”: unchanging, objective, and therefore true.
Before photography appeared, however, the appearance of the world was recorded by draughtsmen and realist painters. It must be admitted that painting underwent a profound evolution: from a memory-based “record” built from one’s own observations, analyses, experiences and study, through the refinement of details and “technical devices” that made it possible to create convincing views even of very short-lived appearances of things - although in reality they were painted for many hours, sometimes for days or even months. Examples include the spray of storm waves in the ocean paintings of Aivazovsky or Turner.
This representation of the appearance of the world might be called the “genius of pure human visual memory” and of the painter’s extraordinary manual mastery. Photography changed memory-based seeing into “instantaneous” seeing, immediately recorded without the need to remember anything. Photography itself became memory. It also showed views that could not be seen with the “naked eye”. It became a “prosthesis” that constructed a new way of seeing reality.
This instantaneous, more perfect appearance of the world returned to painting through photorealism and hyperrealism. We learned to see and remember the world as photography does. Even the understanding of blurred photographs (a smeared image), out-of-focus photographs (a softened image), and spatial or object geometry distorted by photographic lenses became widespread. Sequential and panoramic photographs began to raise questions about what reality actually looks like.
By expanding our natural vision - our “naked-eye” perception of the world - photography began to contradict what we see and to provoke the fear that language is unable to name what photography reveals to us. Throughout the 1970s, conceptual, “media”, analytical and intellectual art dealt with this problem. It gathered scientists, artists and poets, but remained highly elitist. Because it made great demands on the viewer, it was not widely known.
It is worth recalling that its most important arsenal consisted of simple experiments revealing the essence of the question of how we understand and name reality. One example is Kosuth’s famous work in which he placed, side by side, a chair, a photograph of that chair and the “word chair” - three representations of the same thing, each made of an entirely different matter. Among Polish artists one might recall Natalia Lach-Lachowicz and her “Consumer Art”.
Today we are participants in another, fourth revolution - or evolution. We have gained universal access to instantaneous photographic and film recording, with the possibility of immediate viewing. The internet, in turn, has made it possible to transmit that image to any number of potential viewers on a scale previously unknown.
If we add television, also available everywhere, to the visual stimuli that assault us, a suspicion arises that human beings - civilization - are beginning to understand, that is, to define the world not through contact with reality, but through the electronic image and the content fused with it.
It is the photographed or received image that begins to become our reality. Yet we - each of us - are not an image, but a real body. It is worth remembering this. Our idea of the world is built by a computer record. Our consciousness of reality is formed on the internet. Let us remember, however, that this is only an electronic record and transmission. An artificial world.
Photography has travelled from documenting reality to creating it. The matter is serious, because photography can confirm our existence for others, but it cannot do so for ourselves.
Like the conceptual artists of the 1970s, we face the necessity of recognizing the differences between reality and its record on a mobile phone and on the internet. Each of us must begin doing this for ourselves. Artificial intelligence and our own laziness will stand in our way.
We propose the artistic activity “Photo e motion” in the form of an open competition. Its essence is the creation, with a mobile phone, of six-second recordings. We adopted this rule in order to make it easier to compare records made by different authors, and to make the mobile phone easier to use as a tool.
Competition works are governed by a set of clear and precise rules: for example, each work lasts six seconds, recording is possible only through the application, and post-production cannot be used. These rules are not intended to restrict, but to create a unified, clear and shared starting point for comparing works by different authors. They are set out in the documents accompanying the competition, such as the ideological manifesto and the contest rules.
Six seconds is a short time in which to tell a complicated story, but a long time in which to show a significant act of noticing. Six seconds is longer than the time of a single photographic registration, but shorter than film.
Six seconds is enough to feel time passing, yet at the same time it is very little within the rhythm of each person’s existence.
The impossibility of interfering with the record protects us from falling into the trap of the recording device.
Six seconds - is that a lot?
Six seconds - is that little?
Are six seconds exactly enough?
See for yourself.
Marek Janiak, 2026