The last century also went down in history for having defined the paradigms of a new civilization based on electronic images. The advent of film snapshots has opened the horizon of human storytelling through its visual representation beyond drawing and painting. The epochal leap occurred with the reproducibility, the universality of the form and of the static and moving figure. In this way, photography and cinema have contributed to rewriting and updating the grammar of social and political communication Many centuries earlier, the relationship between power and politics had been very well understood by Octavian Augustus who, precisely through the skilful use of images, strengthens and consolidates the his power up to its best known form: the Ara Pacis, iconic symbol of his strength and of the peace achieved with the government of imperial Rome. His example was later copied by Trajan with the well-known Colonna where the bas-reliefs recount his deeds in visual form much more than a written text could have done which, at that time, few were able to read.
To get to the present day, the dramatic moment we are experiencing is reported by a thousand words and millions of images spread in every way. It has been calculated that, given 100 the volume of messages conveyed by What's App, well over half consists of photographs, video sequences or cartoons that "tell" the coronavirus in every possible way. At this moment, what we read, what we hear and what we write will only form part of the story that will be told in the near future when we have to remember what happened. The other part of the news of these days will be made up of photographs, signs, tractgraphs, icons that will become the history of these days.
It will be just a few images of moments or elements taken in exceptional circumstances that, more than many articles, journalistic services, scientific analyzes will be able to document and make us remember these days. The photograph of the Cremona nurse exhausted on the computer keyboard (taken by a colleague of hers, Francesca Magiatordi) inside the hospital where they work has gone around the world. The aerial view of a large highway intersection in Wuhan, China, where it all began, also belongs to the visual chronicle.
These images are already strong, powerful, indelible in memory and will be even more so in the future as they represent and summarize in a frame, in a video, all the drama that we find ourselves experiencing, in Italy and in every other part of the world. world. In this sense, a new chapter of this beginning of the millennium has opened: when we thought we could enter a new era of civilization and progress, we had to change our minds in the short space of a few days to see ourselves sink to the edge of unknown abysses that no one ever , particularly in the generations born and raised after World War II, would never have imagined being. The paragraph of the images that describe this present with a significant variation is exactly in this chapter of human history. In recent decades, we were convinced that video and audiovisual media had taken over and the so-called "civilization of images" of the modern era was dominated only by cameras. Instead we could find ourselves rediscovering the tremendous and granite power of a static image rather than a sequence. Perhaps, we will have to admit without fear that it will be the photographs more than the videos, more or less long, which will enclose in a small space, in a frame, all the feelings, emotions and sensations we are feeling.
The images therefore, the photographs of life in the time of the coronavirus constitute a story which, unfortunately, has only recently begun and we do not know when the final word will be written. However, we know that, in the meantime, we will have to deal with these figures, with these forms, with these representations of individuals, of the community and of our environment for a long time to come. We offer you only some of the best known and most significant, always aware that, unfortunately, the "story of the coronavirus" is still ongoing and for this reason we propose to our readers to send us their photographic point of view, shots and images these days.
