Projects: statements
I & I : Ice & Ikebanas
(Finalist, International Photo Awards 2022, and Tokio International Foto Awards 2022)
An open project on frozen and thawed wildflowers, a poetic research that wants to be a cry of pain for the collapse of the glaciers caused by the global warming of Planet Earth. On July 3 of this year 2022, in Italy, a piece of the Marmolada glacier collapsed, killing people hungry for its beauty. A month before, foreseeing tragedy, I started to create the photos for this project on global warming: preserving the poignant poetry of wild flowers, which I collected in different areas, in different seasons, frozen and thawed. Wildflowers are a symbol of drought resilience, and also of Sapiens, survivors of the great climatic changes in their history. By an unpremeditated coincidence, the acronym of the English title recalls the self-defeating egocentrism of the Sapiens, which create and destroy, freeze and thaws.
Terroirs
( Juror's pick selection LensCulture B&W Awards 2021; Monochrome Award 2022)
The name “Terroirs” is widespread among professionals and enthusiasts of quality wine products.
I could have called the project "Harvesters", but I chose the name "Terroirs", with a bitter irony, to stress the contrast between the name and whoever supplies the workforce of one of the most renowned products of the Winelands of South Africa. This open project, started in 2014, is still going in the Western Cape, mainly in the “Terroirs” of the Huguenot Valley. Here the workforce, is made up of black Africans, coming from various parts of Africa, not only from the Western Cape. The harvesters are recruited from intermediaries who usually do not collect but merely control the harvest.
Most harvesters are young women, who sometimes arrived with elegance and sensuality.
I found in them a sense of aggregation and belonging to a community, rather than an attachment to the territory.
I present the images in a non-chronological order.
In the early four years, until 2018, I mostly saw on the “terroirs” locally born people. Over the past three years, the arrival of workers from Malawi has sparked a wave of cheer that was lacking in Western Cape.
The project, started as a story of harvesters, directed soon to transmit to represent their resilience and humanity.
In photographing, I am very interested in the theatricality of human actions: in this project, the harvesters' performances have the fields and mountains of the Winelands of South Africa as their fifth and backdrop.
W.W.W. ...... Who Watches Whom
(Winner, IPA Photobooks 2021, Category People )
I want to show my irresistible attraction for the spectacle offered by the spectators in all events.
In my work, the participation and intrinsec theatricality of spectators, which brings down the "fourth wall" between artists and the public, becomes my participation too, and puts me on the fil rouge that underlies the mass of spectators and unites us to the artists on stage.
Many photos from different music or sport events are assembled together for a physical "fusion : I want to emphasize the importance of real encounters, as opposed to "social networks", result-cause of social distance.
The Last Ritual
(Commended in Tokyo International Foto Awards 2022)
The Italian director P.P. Pasolini considered football "The last sacred ritual of our time". This ritual also inspired Paolo Sorrentino's recent film, "The Hand of God". In South Africa, the national sport of white and colored Afrikaners has always been rugby. But football remains the passion of black people, and I can see how great is the passion of children and young people playing on the fields, without any institutional help. The hand of God is otherwise invisible, just as the object of desire - - the sacred ball - - is not seen in my images.
Vertigo
In this work, I show my vision of people on the top of Table Mountain,Cape Town, South Africa, by an IR modified camera, that allows the IR light to give its contribution to the scene. I feel a particular intoxication in even moderate altitudes, because in my childhood I loved climbing, and once I fell from a branch. It took me several years to climb back up without feeling a helpless vertigo, which has now turned into a subtle pleasure, like tasting a forbidden fruit.
Ulysses' Gaze
Since my tweens, I have strongly felt my origin, physical and cultural, from Greece. And in adulthood, I continued to pursuit this link, which led me in 2014 to the publication of a photobook: "Ulysses’ Gaze”, dedicated to the film-maker Angelopoulos. Ulysses, my Avatar, is the symbol of, humanity pursuing knowledge, as wrote Dante Alighieri in his poem “Comedia”. My main interest in the project then was and still is to show the lifestyle and the world of the islanders.
In February of the current year, I self-published the photobook Dódeca (Twelve in Greek language), from which the images I present are taken. Twelve: the number of islands in the Dodecanese archipelago, and also the years passed since my arrival by sailing boat in the archipelago. And finally, I have choiced twelve themes to present the images of this open project. The project “Dódeca” is still showing the Ulysses’ gaze in Dodecanese.
“The men and women of these images inhabit their place without enchantment, stuck hot inside the ring of beauty, which is not powder, paint, flicker. Beauty is substance, strength and adventure of waves. Here the residents are surrounded by the element that is the majority of the planet. Therefore the island, and not the mainland, is in the image and likeness of the world” (Erri De Luca, italian novelist, translation Jeffrey Kennedy).