Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

4 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | 25 th O ctober 2013 For me, photography represents life itself. It is communication, and it allows the sharing of experience. It enables us to show others what we see –the things that fascinate us, the people and places we love and hold dear. Some photographers bring light to our difficulties and discontents, the things that betray us and hold us back. Others take us to worlds we could never visit, or help us better understand people we would otherwise never know. At the same time, with a camera we can retain the vanishing moments of our lives. A photograph can ensure that we remember —for example— the amazing view that enchants us in the moment we see it, but then leaves our sight. Or the memorable event; the place we visit once; our children who grow up and change so quickly. The people we love and learn from. The happy, sad, profound moments which animate and enrich all our days. Photography has always had this incredible power to still and hold on to the present –before it disappears into the past. And yet the value of photography as a serious enterprise has been in question since the invention of cameras. For a long time, the question was whether or not photography was Art. It was finally decided that the answer was “Yes”, but now the question is whether or not photography is actually dead. There are conferences about this. At one of these conferences it was recently proposed that while photography might not be dead, it was very likely that photographers were. Here during the same era when more people than ever before have accepted photography as an art form, others wonder whether the still image will survive at all –in this age of digital imaging, camera phones, easily accessible video capture, and the ever-increasing importance of television and the Internet over the photographic object and the printed page. Is photography less special than ever, less meaningful, now that anyone can take a picture, that millions are made every second, and that no one is certain whether or how all these digital images will survive? Annie Leibovitz — Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2013 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities on 25/10/2013.