INTENTION MOVE ENERGY

THE WINTER

Absence of light, even in photography.

It is generally said that light is a form of energy and in reality it is a form of electromagnetic energy little different from radio waves, heat and X-rays. Their common feature is their undulatory nature which as such propagates, deflects, overlaps and reacts against an obstacle. But if you ask a physicist what light is, he will answer that, like other electromagnetic waves, light is in fact a form of matter, little different from concrete things. The particles of light, called photons, travel in swarms much like drops of water from a garden hose; when a photon hits something, it imparts a perceptible shock, just like water drops. Index or icon? We are faced with an apparent paradox: light has wave and corpuscular characteristics. That photography is then an "INDEX" rather than an "icon" changes many things. Accustomed as we are to considering it for its iconic value as an image, whose link with reality is dictated by resemblance, we look at it in the same way as a painting or other form of representation. But if the link between photography and reality is instead of an «indicial» or «physically forced» order as the semiotician Peirce specifies, given by a connection materially produced by the referent, such as a footprint in the sand, then our relationship with photography and the way of understanding it changes. This "miracle" of light has the meaning of a trace, an imprint, as well as a symptom, opening up from a theoretical point of view to the suggestions of a psychoanalytic and philosophical order that these terms refer to. Photography registers a symptom, a sign: is it a statute of proof, is it a silent testimony to which nothing can be added?

In winter, the hours of daylight are counted .

The winter light is not warm in our latitudes but it illuminates, and makes its presence or absence deeply felt: the hours of light are counted, the shapes of the slopes are outlined, walkways, buildings, artifacts are revealed; amplifies dreamlike suggestions, visions and limits contact with the earth. Thoughts do not find the aptitude for doing, for moving, for meeting and one gets lost in self-referential, masturbatory games which in their unfolding sometimes know how to lead to knowledge.

That something to add: self-referential shots.

In this absence of light, in this hint of lack, the idea of how I represent myself emerges when drawing a body with this little light. I look at myself and mirror myself through the lens of a camera knowing that what makes me is objective: it is my imprint. I undress, I put myself naked in a context where the light has been prepared to hit the target, where the presence of other objects can only be verified if they are made visible. Looking at yourself from the outside has a voyeuristic taste and allows you to broaden your attention on shapes, proportions, on what you want to evoke. Body, skin, sex, muscles, shoulders, legs, hips, hands: these nouns give a summary of what the images show. But I have something to add to these traces, to the imprints left on the film.

Further knowledge.

I suffer winter and I love it equally. I suffer from the lack of light, and I love it from the pressing and heavy presence of meteorological extremes. And my camera is a faithful companion in representing frost, twilight, snow, fog. I wanted to create some triptychs and some diptychs because my instinctive relationship with the natural world could only be recorded in this way.

We are strangers to this world.

There is no habitat out there for us. Not a single place that really exists on this earth: we always have to change, not a square centimeter of our skin is the result of a speciation. I am a guest and with a respect bordering on fear, I deploy my energies to listen and enjoy a world that is capable of being indifferent to us. These images bear witness to this absolute truth. I'm vulnerable, I'm insignificant. I know that this winter too I will have done everything possible to make my home comfortable, to protect myself from the cold with clothes, to get through this season as has always been done. To whom do I owe all this? Who started this story? Who created such a helpless and vulnerable being so arrogant and conceited? Why have we forgotten the principle? Who wants our lives to have meaning only in contradiction? A star now low on the horizon is the celestial body that keeps us in check. We owe our existence to so much energy without it having created or shaped us. And I who am a thinking being remain subdued by the flow of this energy which in winter is lack. It's lack of drive, my eye aches when I look for our star in the sky while the darkness sends me back to the matter I represent with my naked body that I look at with an empty heart that thirsts to rediscover encounters, encounters in nature .

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rosalind Krauss "Theory and history of photography" 1990 Bruno Mondadori