Hylonicum

The final version of Hylonicum is ready – although “final” is probably too large a word. Finding a reliable structure able to convey what this experiment means to me has not been easy. My recent photographic research runs along four main threads, titled Iterations, Margins, Spatial Forms, and Operational Forms. They engage with the geometry of space and the arithmetic of social interactions, trying to reach the point where laws are broken and intelligibility needs to be recoded. Matter resists being shaped. Form is unable to establish a durable pattern.

With Iterations, the geometry is one of recursion: the same space walked again and again, waiting for it to reveal what is not immediately perspicuous. These are special places to me, either because I lived there or because, for different reasons, I had the occasion to return to them through repeated and inspired explorations.

A different story is told with Margins. There, people are at centre stage, but at different moments: when they work and when they can break from their daily routine, during moments of shared care, and in intense times of inner reflection or seeking an encounter with the divine. These are special moments of inner manifestation taken as candid shots, with a few occasions in which the candour of the instant is suddenly turned into something else, when the subject realises that they are being photographed.

Spatial Forms is my take on urban photography. With the rise of phone photography, taking a photograph has become an act of extemporaneous freezing: momentary experiences captured in order to be shared with friends, family, and colleagues. I find this trivialisation of photography, and of the experience connected with it, quite telling of our contemporary societies, in which appearance, – a good life, a great icecream, a fantastic holiday – is too often more relevant than reality. With Spatial Forms, I turn to the background of this series of frozen experiences: the constructed and natural spaces that tend to be neglected when we focus only on what happens in front of them. Yet these spaces are themselves narrators of human stories and visions that are worth listening to.

In turn, Operative Forms emerged from the need to follow a different kind of presence: the point at which matter becomes function, action, and command. Here, geometry becomes a principle of recursion, direction, and control. Alignments, mechanisms, and commands appear as operative forms that orient bodies, regulate movement, transmit intention, and distribute intelligence among things. In machines, pipes, panels, gauges, signs, tools, screens, and technical surfaces, I encounter an act of organised matter, whose form becomes a pressure towards operation.

More recently, I have launched a new project called Refigurations, devoted to portrait photography. Thanks to the provocations of SFM, I have realised that my previous take on studio photography was quite ungrounded. Of course, working with models risks moving photography in a direction I am not willing to take: fashionable shots and the banalisation of bodies, which I personally dislike. However, I came to realise that portraits can become a powerful instrument for telling stories – stories which, although made of material sequences of staged moments, can lead to the emergence of an authentic meaning hidden below the veil of ordinary experience.

The last section, Records, includes some documentary sequences I have made in recent years. Documentary photography is somewhat detached from the main aims of my projects, yet it is also a pivotal instrument of testimony and wider commitment. In this sense, both Refigurations and Records are going to be priorities for the next phase of my work.