19/08/2026
Today is
And perhaps the best way to celebrate it is to ask a simple question: what exactly is photography?
Is it the image captured on film, or the one created by a sensor? Is it the photograph printed and kept in a box, or the one that lives on a screen and disappears among thousands of others? Is it street photography, portraiture, landscape, weddings, photojournalism, fashion, nature, documentary photography, or simply an image made by someone who saw something and felt the need to preserve it?
Perhaps it is all of these.
Because, over almost two centuries, photography has ceased to be merely an invention and become a language. A way of looking, telling, remembering and communicating. Cameras, processes, formats and the speed at which we create images have changed. But the same desire remains: to hold on to a moment before it disappears.
Today, we take more photographs than ever. We photograph to remember, to share, to communicate, to work, to create. Sometimes, we even take photographs without really knowing why.
And perhaps that is precisely where the power of photography lies: it does not need a single definition.
A photograph can be a document or a memory. It can be a testimony or an invention. It can be what happened, or what we chose to see. It can last for centuries or disappear in a second.
At its heart, taking a photograph is a way of saying: I was here. I saw this. This meant something to me.
So, this 19th of August, more than a technique, let’s celebrate the act of seeing.
The photograph we took yesterday. The one we will take tomorrow. And all those that, without us knowing it, may one day become a memory of who we were.
Happy World Photography Day. 📷
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