In mineralogy, pseudomorphism occurs when one mineral transforms into another while retaining its original chemical composition unchanged. In the same way, the works making up the Pseudomorphika project have the “composition of photography” without being photography; they possess its technology but not its language, and the human figures they portray exist, but differently from how they appear.
At the root of the research leading to these results are certain questions that, years ago, imposed themselves with urgency in my work as a photographer: to what extent can a phenomenon be described by photographing it? To what extent is analysis useful? Can one truly be objective? What is missing in an image identical to the portion of reality it depicts? Although artists such as Cartier-Bresson and Salgado had amply shown me the possibility of poetic photography even within the limited objectivity of the technological medium, I suddenly sensed the danger of the excessively analytical gaze on reality that photography was, and still is, helping to normalize. A gaze that endlessly multiplies a surface-level datum but ceases to probe deeply, that insists on the individual within society while neglecting the human being, severing all ties with any artistic or philosophical tradition. Considering instead that the archetypal questions about existence, the mystery of being alive and of dying, and the substantial ambiguity of every phenomenon remain vital, I decided to try to bend the photographic medium to these concerns. On a technical level, two operations therefore became necessary: expanding my skills to include digital manipulation and painting techniques; and codifying a language that would not risk being confused with illustration or the fantasy genre. This is not about imagining other realities while disregarding the practical problems of the world, which must be addressed in altogether different ways and contexts, but about recovering a conscious gaze on that confrontation with the multiform and the unknowable from which existence has always originated. A gaze that today seems entirely absorbed by the minute analysis of current events and that, in my view, lies at the root of the countless distortions of the society we have created.
At present, this research path is chiefly represented by two series of works: Rivoluzionario passo zero, completed in 2018 and exhibited several times, and Ka, an unpublished series begun in 2019 and still in progress. Pseudomorphika draws from these two distinct moments its key developments, above all in relation to the treatment of the body and the face, which are photographed and then reconstructed “pseudomorphically” according to increasingly structured rules, with the precise intent of giving form to figures possessing the fundamental traits of ambiguity, of uncertain and controlled verisimilitude, indispensable for expressing those original impulses of human action that constitute the thematic core of the entire body of work.
Visit the series of works Pseudomorphika
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