Interno Zoo

The publication is independently produced: 24 × 30 cm format, 40 pages, 28 color images. Printed on Fedrigoni papers using HP Indigo, it is conceived as a folded, unbound editorial object.

Interno Zoo is a visual exploration that has the Rome Zoo as its starting point; a space specifically designed for observation, and thus making it possible to focus on the very ways in which the gaze is directed within a given context. In zoos, pathways, enclosures, apertures, and thresholds form the infrastructure of the gaze. They are the elements through which the attention is guided, contained and permitted; instruments for organising movement; constructions for regulating the distance between the observer and the observed; and constructions of control within a simulation of reality. Through a process of narrative subtraction, Interno Zoo excludes animals and visitors from the image. This makes what remains – the ensemble of structures, surfaces, pathways, and separation devices – the exclusive object of the investigation. Without bodies to display, the zoo loses its spectacle-like dimension and reveals itself as a constructed environment. The images record what normally serves as a backdrop. Each photograph shows a space designed for a specific function. The cages, observation points, barriers and pathways do not narrate an event, but a logic.

The Interior is presented as a condition of proximity, as a viewpoint that accepts the limitation of remaining within the given perimeter and observing its rules. The gaze does not seek the exception, but remains within the system. This work does not document what takes place in the zoo, but what makes it possible for something to happen. It shows a waiting area, defined not by what it contains, but by how it was designed to fulfil such a purpose.