Photography is also creation

For a long time, I believed photography was only valid if it was real. Photojournalism. Recording what is happening exactly as it is happening.

Until I went to an exhibition at MAAT and got shaken. The photographer wasn’t just capturing reality. He was creating. Building sets, hiring set designers, producing a 15-second scene just to take a single photograph. And to me, that sounded like manipulation.

Halfway through, he said something that completely opened my mind:

If cinema isn’t only documentary, why does photography have to be?

Photography is also art. It is creation. It is expression.

I realized that even if my strongest connection is to spontaneous, documentary-style photography, it is still valid to edit, compose, and play with colors and cutouts. It is valid for photography to be a reflection of who I am, not just of what the world looked like at that moment.

In the end, I let go of the prejudice. Because telling a story in my own way is not falsifying reality.

It’s creating. And creating is always valid.