Come spirto in un'ampolla
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Dates2022 - Ongoing
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Author
“Come spirto in un’ampolla” is about Alessandro, a businessman who decided to isolate himself from society for a solitary life inside the ancient ruins of Guardea Vecchia (Umbria, Italy).
He bought the ruins way back in 2000, and then a subsequent financial disaster due to bad investments and legal fights did not allow him to make his dream possible: rebuilding them as a wellness and cultural center. That place has only become his confinement, where his resilience has no value except in the creation of his “artwork”.
Between “superhuman silence and very deep stillness”, as he likes to say, Alessandro lives in a suspended state of incompleteness, constantly fluctuating between dream and reality; in fear of old age and death, and in the pain of going through these life stages alone.
The title of this story circles back to the day Alessandro and I met, under random circumstances, on the Cammino dei Borghi Silenti (a five-day hike). Up on a hill, among those ruins, where he has lived in solitude for fourteen long years, our first meeting took place. On a late October morning, he recited Leopardi's and Michelangelo's poems. One of Michelangelo's verses from the poem "La mia allegrazz' è la maninconia" became the title of the project.
After that discovery, what pushed me to return to him was his existential condition which acted as a mirror to a hidden and dark part of myself. That place, the atmosphere, the quoted verses by that man, echoed until all they reawakened what was my type of isolation as a consequence of the pain of a loss.
I wanted to know more about him, about his story. More like questions, his choice could maybe reveal a little more about the need to disappear in that way. Photographing Alessandro could have been an investigation of that confinement. Initially, I also felt fear in the attempt to imagine myself in that state of incompleteness that he experiences in himself. It was as if there, in that place, and with his presence, some of my feelings were projected in that reality. Portraying him from multiple perspectives placed me in the position of the subject as if there were me or parts of me being captured by the lens. A feeling that involved me. I looked at him, who looked back at me, and sometimes I could feel myself in his limitations.
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