Swim till I sank - PhMuseum

Swim Till I Sank is an invitation to immerse yourself deep into this flux, sinking but not drowning.

After working for more than a decade as a photojournalist Gabriele Stabile opened his archive and began a new journey altogether starting from the photographs he had taken on assignment and slowly, painstakingly, transforming them by hand into the tables you see as you leaf through the book. The creative action of the photographer, like human memory, leaves traces, signs, scratches, repetitions, in the seemingly impossible attempt to depict a memory or its emotional footprint. Swim Till I Sank is an invitation to immerse yourself deep into this flux, sinking but not drowning.

«These photographs are born again through the lens of a dream, in a larger and bigger dimension than a single memory or the simple facts. The golden eyes here are those that reminisce, surveying and surpassing the moment to tackle time. They can see and restitute the beauty and elegance of a simple gesture, echoing in different times and places. The Aristotelian unities of photojournalism now decisively disappeared. [...] The artist’s gesture, the performance of creating, goes through two distinct moments: the immediate recording of an event first, and the elaboration of the same years later, when the images have dissipated their ties to the real, and memories have faded. Practicing imagination becomes a necessary exercise to breathe new life and truth into the world.»— Giulia Zorzi