la cifra
| As Juliane Vogel explained in an essay on aerostatic vision, the spherical shape of the hot-air balloon can be the metaphor of an eye freed from the conditioning of the body. The top view, from the eyes-balloon of Odilon Redon to the New Vision photographic in the 1920s, represented the utopia of a disembodied and mobile eye, virtually able to take on itself all the essential functions of the body. LA CIFRA is above all a hypothesis of photographic vision that contemplates, on the contrary, a re-incarnation of the gaze: a look-body on another body. In the shooting session the photographer and the person photographed are both immersed in total darkness. The camera is positioned on the studio ceiling. At irregular intervals, and without the photographer’s control, the camera shutter is activated. Always in the dark, photographer and photographed head quickly towards the bright rectangle marked on the ground in the middle of the room. The subject “frames” a different portion of his/her body in the rectangle; only at this moment the photographer can see the body, illuminating it by hand with a small flash-light, to allow the exposure of the photographic image.
In the repetition of the shots, in the length of the session, in the density of darkness, in the paradox of a look overlooking but not dominating, in the random sequence of anatomical parts, in the physical fatigue of an active pose, in the “reductionist” and presentative mode, in the self-forgetfulness that the process induces, we produce images of a flesh in which the body, once dissociated, dive again.
La cifra (2016-)
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