enduring
| In the pictures of the series called Enduring, a work in progress, the gaze moves from the face to the body of the subjects, to their being in the space. A gaze that is once again, like in Restrain, rescued from the dictatorship of the eyes and then steered by our physical presence in the set. My frontal, standing position is symmetrical to the one of the subject; my role is then more active: the masses of our bodies face one another, and in the set (and in the images) there is a detained tension, a sort of unstable permanence. During the posing session, the subjects are constantly kept in motion: it is an extremely slow motion, nearly still, resisting against taking a specific pose and any self-representation whatsoever. Here the persons inhabit a territory, the blackness surrounding them is not just a background, but it has its own density, which is acted by our own mutual perception. The camera is set on a tripod, and I shoot in the distance, without looking into the viewfinder. The deed of framing/aiming moves then to the background; the composition of the framing ceases to be an aggressive act. Renouncing to a compositional act weakens the power relationship between the observer and the observed, setting the subjects free from the judgement of the photographic gaze. The use of a continuous light favours an environmental unity which is never interrupted by the photography shots, putting first the persistence of time and space. The figures gather against the background, stand out from it without ever completely coming off it, they are immersed in it. Their bodies then hang in the balance between offering themselves and subtracting from our gaze; their gaze must necessarily linger and peer.
Enduring (2012-) |