We circle around the light even though we are consumed by its fire︎2020-2021
13 Photographic essays on body, representation and identity for La Ortiga, magazine of art, literature and thought.
Starting from the idea of the rest in a pandemic context, I have developed a series of photographs thinking about the eradication of spirit, feeling and intelligence thus reducing us to pure matter, to residue, to virus. Keeping only one thing in mind, our capability to infect or not.
In order to transmit this idea, it did not make much sense to me to take the photographs as I had been shooting them for years, but it seemed to me that I had to get as close as possible to an aseptic execution, as "objective" as I could, within the possibilities that the production of images gives us. That is why I decided not to use a camera. I did not choose a film nor edit the images except to clean them up. I used a document scanner to avoid as much as possible the human decision capacity and to be able to reproduce the images as if they were evidence of a homicide, traces of the virus.
Although it has not been proven to date that hair is a more effective way of transmitting the virus than any other surface, this last image has less to do with that ability to contaminate than with the idea of hair as an element of personal identity. As the way to represent not only a belonging to a particular ethnic group but also to a certain vital state in my case (historically, in Greece or Rome, changes in the haircut are associated with defining moments in the life of the person).
The moment in the summer of 2020 when I decided to cut my hair was indirectly related to the context of the pandemic. The need to remove part of the image I have had of myself the last season and draw new identification and personality traits. To get rid of the general sense of loss of humanity in which we had been placed on a social level and to erect the act of cutting my hair as an intimate and gut decision.
The moment in the summer of 2020 when I decided to cut my hair was indirectly related to the context of the pandemic. The need to remove part of the image I have had of myself the last season and draw new identification and personality traits. To get rid of the general sense of loss of humanity in which we had been placed on a social level and to erect the act of cutting my hair as an intimate and gut decision.
