This paper attempts to explore the social and political aspect of Art, through the example of Photography and Painting, as they were forming on the verge of the 20th century. The issue of Art and representation in general, is founded on an unsolved existential quest which was born in the earliest chapters of human history.  In fact, Art is often characterized as an apathetic tool, useful only to observe human activity.  This argument can be easily disproved by simply studying the history of Painting and Photography, so it can be proved that both of them were always facing society and gazed its progressive forces. Photography, was born in the middle of 19th century, the era of great scientific, intellectual and social revolutions in Europe and emerged into Art in the early days of 20th century, through a clearly socially-and politically-oriented agenda, which the time of two World Wars, several civil wars, countless conflicts and social revolutions imposed.  On the same time, painting has developed a serious number of avant-garde movements and unleashed a scathing criticism of the spiritual, political and social reality, sometimes by protesting alongside the social forces and other times by being introvert, but never essentially indifferent. The impact of this past era reaches our days transformed into an exceptionally rich vocabulary which covers numerous fields, such as Philosophy, Science and Art. This process poses, however, the trap of division, between the form and the content, which lies in every aspect of modern life, human expression and mentality. Through the pages of this work, there is no attempt to give a definition of the reality nor  a definition of art, but rather to formulate a thought  about art nowadays and to propose a role that art needs to have today. After all, art and speech are the pulse of society of every culture, in any time.