Halftone #02
Where are we heading to?
The title is bold, it could be the headline of a scientific journal for a new cosmos discovery or a theory of human evolution. This interrogation is not metaphorical anymore as we can replace its significance with concrete means: to the real. And to the unknown.
Determining the location and timing for displacement or retention of the population by means of war, crisis, climate, and viruses is at stake.
The paradox of our time is that of the asynchrony with our own time; from sedentary to nomadism, from identity to recreation of itself, from inclusion to vulnerability, from new riches to new refugees. We may well have missed the time when Walter Benjamin envisioned Photography as a way to see a world marked by the predominance of devices in which man has organized himself accordingly. And so we have, for his contentment. And here we are, entangled in the ever-increasing mutual dependency between ourselves and things, in an era of the worldwide web, where the hyper-image-conscious plays a weighty role. And Photography adapted. And people too, their visions and questions.
The magazine you have in hands, issue #02 of Halftone Photo Magazine, gives us syncopated signals at large of a suspended time and space — in suspense — of territories in transition where spaces are made of stages. The rails are there waiting for people to run on them. Photographers here are seeking new paths of reality, departing from the unknown. There is light in shadow, it ́s an outer shadow called the penumbra, not completely eclipsed.
Who would like to perform in a wrecked space, once a stage and once a building for well-dressed people? Why travelling is made of instances that will never happen again, like Photography, like life? What can a man do in a bolted dispute but stroll around the city? How can one take the most from a room with a view?
Time, space and light still seem to be the essence, but differently. Perhaps, the initial question is more ontological, to which our photographers shed penumbra. The cover photo may well be worthy of the original question, whereas the inside content would be left for readers to decipher by themselves.
The Editorial Team