Assignment Two
Over the last few years, I have engaged in some photographic projects, induced by academic exercises or assignments.
However, in this period, I have tried not to lose the impulse to design and complete works that interested me or whose inspiration came from reading, or even from some particular occasion.
The HALF project was born by chance, during a short stay of mine in New York, United States. One afternoon I was hanging around the streets of this metropolis so fascinating for us Europeans, when I saw something that inspired me and that I immediately photographed, without thinking too much about it.
Soon after I started to reflect on why that image of a person, half-hidden behind a wall, had hit me. Was I perhaps on the way to participate, as Joachim Schmid stated, in the reiteration of the production of typological images, to be classified as legs, or arms, or other?
I believe instead I was interested and stimulated by not knowing exactly what was behind the wall, the "unseen".
I was sure that I would find examples of my idea in other photographers, but I started my research with a very typologically connoted keyword, so I searched in flicker with the keyword "legs" and found hundreds of photos.
I then searched with the keyword "unseen". Only in very few cases are there images that subtract part of the body: in most cases, it refers to a subject who does not look or does not see (for example, he covers his eyes), to extremely blurred subjects, unused objects (for example shoes).
I, therefore, had the confirmation that "unseen" is a theme that identifies a concept, in all its multiple interpretations.
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| https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=unseen&safe_search=1 |
Given the great variety of interpretations and approaches, even very authoritative ones, of the theme of "unseen", I have had the confirmation that I have kept away from the pure search for a typology.
However, it is through a typology that I have produced my images on this theme.
During my studies, I have already dealt with the theme of the "unseen" in photography. It is linked to what is seen in the boundary of the image and what, outside this boundary, the viewer can only imagine, in a good example of a postmodernist exercise, where the author leaves everyone the freedom to interpret and derive meanings.
Even if the photo I took in New York does not denote the unseen with the border of the image, it is the wall that does it, as if it were a "border within the border".
I believe that the result is the same and that this "half-seen" stimulates the viewer to imagine what he does not see, in a search for identity which, however, I, as the author of the image, have addressed, establishing that, in my photos, the unseen is always a part of the human being.
From this situation/occasion, the idea was born to continue with this project, which I then called HALF. The title can be interpreted with the meaning of the word itself, but it can also be a typological acronym for Hand, Arm, Leg, Foot. In fact, the common point of view that binds the photos I took inside this, ongoing, project, is the absence of part of the body and in any case and always of the head.
The head, the face of a person strongly connote his identity, even if not completely. They lead to classify whoever is in front of you, forming prejudices and being influenced by stereotypes, based on standardized criteria of aesthetics and expression.
Even more, the other parts of the body, in their most varied conformations, colours, clothes, accessories, lead us to draw conclusions about what the head will look like, based on aesthetic and social stereotypes.
You won't expect a pretty face from a fat body, you won't expect a scruffy head or a piercing from a pair of professional shoes and a pair of perfectly ironed grey pants.
From a half-view of one or more people, a mental process of completion arises that each of us is expected and stimulated to deliver: in order to complete, we draw on all our experiences and beliefs, according to our own way, to be, have been, think and have thought.
For my assignment, I avoided exposing photos of other authors (even on Flickr most do not allow reproduction) and I selected a set of my photos from the HALF project.