In June 2017, I participated in the artistic residency of Nature, Art & Habitat Residency – NAHR, in Val Taleggio, northern Italy. The book contains both the images resulting from the chemical, analog process that I termed bio-inspired, as well as the photographs taken in the valley environment during my research.
104 pages, 69 black and white plates. 24 x 20 cm. hardcover. ISBN 978-88-946514-0-9.
A tribute, as critical as it is empathic, to the simple, the authentic, and the local. It is a subjective work, based much more on metaphor and evocation than on manifestos or affirmations. This series of images, somehow, connects us with our immediate past, opening, by contrast with our present, a space to reflect on and question our current world.
The reality is thus suggested, undeclared, giving the audience the possibility to imagine. These images must be interpreted both by what is seen in them and by what is suggested by them.
The resulting photographs only reflect fragments, and they sometimes cause visual awkwardness. Those who do not know the Taleggio Valley can imagine it in a more open and free manner, while those familiar with the area see their spaces in perhaps unexpected ways.
Bio-Inspired Process. If Rene Magritte in his seminal work La Trahison des Imagenes (The Treachery of Images) makes us aware of the gap between images and objects, The Gap is Narrow project tries to bridge this gap through a bio-inspired process that results in a perfect symbiosis between the natural constituents of the photography subjects and the actual photographs. The resulting photographs go beyond representation and metaphor, merging culture and nature. To this end, the darkroom process is polluted with the very essence of the photographed subjects or with those materials one has had contact with daily. In this process, the images are revealed through chance, noise, and non-programmed events.
