PENDOLARI
Caught in their journey, between train and underground, from Legnano to Cassina de Pecchi. Photographed in a moment of silent suspension, without awareness, smiles, resentful. While hypnotic landscapes flow by the window, they wait. Minutes, halves of hours of inscrutable human condition. Connective pieces of life. Between sleep and work, or during the return trip, between boredom and the desire of being home. Only recently I recovered from the catatonic lack of sensibility of the journey, a feeling that I used to share with the subjects of my pictures.
Attracted by the green neon light that makes those faces anonymous and universal, the need of telling this story arose in me: a tale where nothing happens, no words, no memories.
But it was also part of my personal story which I didn’t want to leave as “temp perdu”. With my stolen photographs I lived the illusion of going through the camera, of catching someone else’s destiny. But, maybe, taking pictures of myself wouldn’t have lead to different results. The most difficult part of the project, since it was not as ‘loyal’ as it should have been, was camouflaging the shoot. This was made possible by using a small and very silent digital camera. Usually, I think of and practice photography as a social act, but this time I did not have a choice: the awareness of the subject, its coming back to a formal consciousness, would have nullified the purpose of my research. The idea of showing this work, that I consider still unachieved, was born from the natural need of sharing and comparing it, in order to refine my expressivity and to find out a point of contact between my sensibility and the observers’ (and observed).
