I started working on MNEMOSYNE in 2023, printing the positive film scans onto photographic paper. I then worked on these prints with ink, fire, cuttings, tape, water, wax, construction putty, and other physical elements. The positive prints are eventually torn apart and re-glued together, then scanned and inverted as if they were the actual film strip. Later on, I continued with both positive film sources and digitally inverted images to start with. The four works here are the result of a subsequent extraction from all the material produced during 2023 and 2024.
This series explores the relationship between memory and the photographic medium, probing the urgent need to document the present amid the relentless physical and mental erosion brought by time. Memory, left to its own devices, is unreliable — our recollections morph, degrade, and eventually vanish, leaving behind a distorted version of reality. This creates an unsettling sense of loss, as if our past is irretrievably gone, erasing the foundation of our identity—our actions, experiences, and relationships.
Photography offers a deceptive antidote to this anxiety, presenting an ostensibly objective account of the past. It persuades us that life once looked exactly as the image shows, fostering a false sense of security in the "truth" of these captured moments. Yet, this very medium imposes its own manipulations and biases. While memory reshapes reality gradually and subtly, photography distorts it abruptly and insidiously. The curated framing, selective focus, and inherent biases of photographic reproduction shape a version of reality as fragmented and fallible as memory itself.
In MNEMOSYNE, I wanted to challenge the presumed objectivity of photography by deliberately intervening in its foundational element: the negative film. These acts of physical and digital manipulation expose the hidden distortions that photography creates. The resulting images are haunting and disquieting, laying bare the tension between the medium's perceived reliability and its actual malleability.
Through this process, the series delves into the dynamics of deconstruction and reconstruction, mirroring the way we process memory and identity. It examines how we piece together fragments of our past, reshaping them into something meaningful despite their inherent instability. By embracing the intentional distortion of photographic images, the project seeks to underscore the ongoing interplay between creation, destruction, and re-creation our our identity and the reality we shape around us.
Mnemosyne #1
MNEMOSYNE #1 is a series of five photographs created through an iterative process of transformation. The series began with five printed copies of the negative of a photograph featuring an artist friend. On the first print, I wrote a piece of feedback he had given me on a previous art project, inscribing his words directly onto the printed negative with a marker. From there, I used my handwriting and my memory of the text to replicate it onto the second print, introducing unintentional alterations. I then burned parts of the second iteration, further distorting the image and the words. This altered version became the template for the third iteration, where the gaps in memory and the physical marks left by fire had already begun to erase meaning. The process continued, each print serving as the source for the next, until the fifth and final iteration.
MNEMOSYNE #2
MNEMOSYNE #2 is the most direct piece in the project, explicitly addressing how the act of shaping reality — particularly through the act of remembering and forgetting — is not objective nor passive, but involve conscious and unconscious processes of selection which makes us directly responsible for it.
Omaggio a F.B.
OMAGGIO A F.B. is a playful exploration of identity (symbolized by the face, in this case) and the sacredness of memory, juxtaposed with the kitsch aesthetic of an altar triptych. Inspired by and paying homage to the work of Francis Bacon, it presents a double-sided, anachronistic triptych of distorted faces, blending reverence with irreverence to comment on the interplay between form, memory, and distortion.
LANDSCAPES
The four works in the LANDSCAPES series are presented as paired photographs—each pair consisting of a negative and a positive—displayed in separate frames. These pieces draw inspiration from the familiar imagery of vacation landscapes, evoking the casual snapshots tourists often take, typically featuring friends set against scenic backdrops.
Exhibition
The project was featured in the group exhibition {DE}CONSTRUCT/{RE}CONSTRUCT organised by EIKON Project and showcased in December 2024 in Turin (IT).
