S.Bast.Photographies: Freedom of the Press

May 2024 Press Freedom Day Issue - Interviews - Posted:


No freedom of the press without moral responsibility linked to it. We can write or publish about everything we want by respecting this principle, the only problem is where to locate the moral cursor.


Let us remember the French slogans of May 68, “it is forbidden to prohibit” and the wind that blew until the end of 90, allowing the highlighting in the press or the media, writings, artists, photographers, talented and controversial musicians, that would otherwise be unknown. It was the press which placed the moral cursor, that it moved with the riggs of the feeling of the time and its mercantile needs. The press was therefore free, while respecting the responsibility of its publications. But everything would change.


The advent of the Internet, especially its accessibility to the general public in the 2000s has arrived. The promise of freedom and discovery announced to was kept for a time. The press found its account, it adapted, and prospered, at least at first. I also became a photographer thanks to the internet, like many other artists who were discovered through it. She kept her freedom, her power, and increased her readership. But that was without counting the arrival and the incessant growth of social networks giving birth to an uncontrollable US monster, META. Under a false pretext of connecting people from all over the world, they

began, always with a purely mercantile purpose, and without any responsibility or verification, to disseminate all things that could please the greatest number, generating more followers, That we knock out ads on the shelves of useless publications. The controversial arts, especially charming photography, have not resisted this wave. First broadcast, then monitored, censored, and finally partially removed immediately, but it will eventually disappear from these networks, like other artistic sectors. If the crowd doesn’t like it, it doesn’t pay, so it’s forbidden. This is META’s policy, and they decide now. Not content with killing the trade press, he marginalizes it. In conclusion, freedom of the press still exists, but there is no more press, it hardly survives, fighting against a giant falsely moralistic, diverting the slogan “it is forbidden not to prohibit.”


The press must resist, I remain convinced that she is not dead. When about charming photography, which interests us in this case, it exists in magazines since the 50s, big sister of the Pin Up, it will always have a future, but not on social networks. It will be necessary to be imaginative and find him a setting to express himself. A magazine like yours, struggle, and we can only thank it, for the photographers as for the readers who fortunately are still numerous.


Resist.. It will pay off!

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