For some time now I have been feeling a sense of leaden stillness pervading our lives; here and elsewhere in our part of the world, under threatening but ignored skies, we contemplate our navels like so many Buddhas and it is not wise meditation but enchanted sleep.
We wait, motionless, for someone or something to come and wake us up, but it will not be the kiss of a prince charming.
With the work I present here, I have tried to render my feeling of stillness photographically.
It may seem obvious at a superficial glance, after all, photography immobilises, captures the moment, freezes a movement, but in this way it also emphasises it. In the eye of the beholder, that movement, immobilised for eternity, continues with the mind: Bob Capa’s stricken militiaman keeps falling forever. And it is in the contradiction between motion and immobility that lies the ambiguous fascination of many photographs.
But this is photographing movement, this is war photography, or the humanistic photography of so many masters.
Photographing immobility is a different kettle of fish.
The images in this work were taken in the last week of August in Venticano, in the province of Avellino, a town that history, earthquakes, and recent prosperity have sprinkled with non-places, unfinished buildings, houses abandoned in an endless stasis, and anonymous cottages: postcards from an almost abstract place.
I also kept some reportage from Chernobil in mind when shooting the images for this work, just to signify that you don’t need a nuclear disaster to achieve certain atmospheres.
So I finally met Twentydog although if so surreal, abandoned and lonely: I love your still life postcards
Grazie Lucilla, in effetti avevo in mente i reportage da Chernobyl quando ho fatto quelle foto, tanto perché non serve una catastrofe per certe atmosfere, basta la normalità