Ever since I started developing this passion for photography, I thought that it could be fascinating to link a particular shot with a particular thought found in a book – or to whole books, in some cases. I’ve decided to post one here.
1. The Last Judgment
1. The Last Judgment
« Dieu n'est pas nécessaire pour créer la culpabilité, ni punir. Nos semblables y suffisent, aidés par nous-mêmes. [...] Je vais vous dire un grand secret, mon cher. N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours. »
‘God is not necessary in order to create guiltiness, or to punish. Our fellow humans suffice, aided by ourselves. […] I’ll let you in on this big secret, my dear. Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.’
[Albert Camus, La Chute]
Albert Camus, French writer of the half of last century, offers in this captivating novel – or monologue? – entitled The Fall (1956) a view of modernity which is as unsettling as truthful. He maintains, and with him Jean-Paul Sartre especially in his play Huis clos (No Exit, 1944), that modern man cannot refrain from constantly judging all that surrounds him, thus rendering that famous and fearsome Last Judgment a quotidian affair. As Sartre writes in the aforementioned play,
Albert Camus, French writer of the half of last century, offers in this captivating novel – or monologue? – entitled The Fall (1956) a view of modernity which is as unsettling as truthful. He maintains, and with him Jean-Paul Sartre especially in his play Huis clos (No Exit, 1944), that modern man cannot refrain from constantly judging all that surrounds him, thus rendering that famous and fearsome Last Judgment a quotidian affair. As Sartre writes in the aforementioned play,
« L'enfer, c'est les Autres. »
‘Hell is other people.’
The same hell which used to be located underground, a macabre, darkness-ridden place, appears now to surface and replace everyday life. And this hell consists precisely in the fact that modern man cannot but be at the same time victim and perpetrator of the psychological violence which, on the one hand, he endures but which on the other he has to inflict upon others. When he judges, he feels, he thinks, he cannot help at the same time utilising the same instruments which other people have given him, thus subjugating himself to the image and the opinion of him shared by them. Modern man is therefore utterly dependent on other people, thereby rendering this judgment a feature which he cannot separate from himself. This does not mean, though, that there is no way of redeeming himself from this, and Camus and Sartre, as a professor in the animation film Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001) points out, advocate on the one hand a philosophy of crisis, Existentialism, but on the other they intend at the same time to put across a positive message, a message of hope, within the hell of modernity. In fact, they both regard a way to salvation, a path leading to the betterment of society, as part of their plan. This is made possible by beginning with an engagement, i.e. by engaging intellectuals and modern men in the practicalities of life.
My photograph, which was taken in Piazza San Pietro (Vatican City), intended to get this message across, namely that nowadays the Last Judgment takes place every day without us noticing, but we paradoxically keep projecting it elsewhere, towards a nearly divine jury who look upon us whilst the sky acts as a spokesman for the fundamental moment which it must represent for each of us. This photo, in other words, depicts the Last Judgment in the collective imagination, whereas the quote which I have reported and explained intends instead to draw attention to the contrast between this and what existentialist writers maintained.
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