Rischiano pene molto severe

1998

Journalistic and documentation photography do not evoke any thoughts anymore - it has been this way since a long time - it does not hit our attention anymore, we rather tend to isolate it exactly as we do with beggers when we look away at traffic lights or in the underground. They risk very strict punishments is the title of the work I realised for the exhibition Subway, curated by Roberto Pinto. This is a series of photographs of tramps taken while they sleep at street corners or in the train stations, then rotated around a 90° angle and hung vertically. The pictures' change of orientation intends to give the tramps their dignity back; dignity returned to them through our eyes' attention. The imbalance of the visual horizon becomes a symbol of trespassing the established, conventional ways of looking at things that we all take for granted. And photography becomes both a final remainder of a process of experiences lived at the origin of the work, as well as a link, an instrument, a pretext in favour of the experience itself.