Camus uses the figure of Sisyphus, eternally damned in the afterlife, as an example of a life lived above the absurd. Like us, Sisyphus lives a meaningless life, forced into the eternal repetition of a futile task. Yet, as the stone rolls down the mountain temporarily freeing him from his burden, he is conscious of the absurdity of his fate and free of any hope of change, totally aware of how his life, like ours, is in vain. Therefore, says Camus, if we are to believe in happiness outside of illusions, we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Photography, among all arts, seems to me the one that comes closest to the experience of the absurd, and the photographer thus becomes something alike to a modern Sisyphus.

A photograph is not a product of the author as much as a production of reality and in its purest form says nothing about the artist and everything about what is depicted. In such manner the artist's effort is no longer of representation, but rather of participation in a process that, if left undisturbed, would tend to ignore his subjectivity. The photograph is, therefore, essentially disconnected from the individual dimension and totally traceable to the sensible world; in a movement that is opposite to that of the traditional figurative arts, which starts instead from the author's sensibility. Nevertheless, the photographer endures in his activity and finds joy in the creative experience.

Photography says nothing, explains nothing, refers to nothing but itself, and attests to nothing of what is depicted but its existence. Then again, to collect a photograph is to collect the world and in the photographer’s hand remains nothing but the world itself. The act of taking a photograph is solely the recognition that something exists, passively but forcefully, with the pressing of a button and the activation of a mechanical apparatus that with its speed, precision and exactness surpasses the human dimension. It is an instant that exists only in itself and hardly affects the photographer, who is thus deprived of the very moment of creation of the work of art. Everything that happens before and after, every study and explanation, is a construction present only in the artist's mind and does not concern the real essence of the work.

The absurd photographer does not seek to impose his own meaning on the apparatus, aware that photography will always remain tied more to what is represented than to whom is representing. As he is aware of living an existence devoid of meaning, he agrees to produce art equally deprived of it. He is aware that photography is essentially an act of non-intervention.

Like Sisyphus, however, he can accept this limitation, even going so far as to affirm it in his creativity. Discovering himself free in the repetition of a meaningless shot he can fulfill his own destiny and avoid succumbing to the absurd. The absurd photographer takes a picture and does not look at it, but full of satisfaction is ready to take another one and another after in endless repetition. As a photographer, he does not seek for meaning, only for the act itself. He accepts a creation that starts from the world and not from himself, fulfilled solely by the affirmation of what is and is affirmed in the mechanical release of the shutter.

If the photographer were not happy when he pressed the button, if he were looking at the photo he had just taken searching for any meaning, if he were looking for the reason of the shot or for an inevitably missing justification, he would find his art, as well as his very existence, insufficient. Therefore, if we want to believe in an art that can be salvation outside of illusions, while taking the shot, we must imagine the photographer happy.