HYSTORY OF VIOLENCE
Apparently dead bodies, victims of some kind of violence suffered in their own domestic space.
Their identity? Irrelevant. This is suggested by the choice of not showing their faces, a practice that marks the beginning of the gradual dismantling of the traditional conventions of the portrait. And not even the hand imparting death, not even the crime weapon represent the focal points of the photographer's quest. On the contrary, the undisputed protagonist of these photographs is the light: as sharp as a blade, it subtly penetrates from a distant elsewhere and rips off a veil of fear, not of death itself, rather of the obnoxious indifference to it, as the result of generalized death imagery saturation.
In its serial quality, History of Violence is a catalogue and, simultaneously, a disciplined investigation: the certainty of fiction (death is staged) refracts all the ambiguity of reality, so that the pervasive staging quality of the narrative brings up questions on both the "faithfulness" of photography in its process of translating reality, and the immutability of death as an act.
These photographs, therefore, have a double function: on the one hand, they are memento mori and, on the other hand, they become a translation strategy, a personal technique to accept a compromise with the very thought (and the fear) of dying.
(2010 - Daniela Fargione/Anglo-american Languages and Literatures/University of Turin)
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Articolo pubblicato su Altre Modernità , Rivista di studi letterari e culturali dell’Università di Milano >
