Meno Umani

This project was born as a spontaneous reaction to the long period of the crisis caused by the pandemic and it questions the strong psychological impact that this is having on human beings.

This project was born as a spontaneous reaction to the long period of the crisis caused by the pandemic and it questions the strong psychological impact that this is having on human beings.

I tried to visually transpose, through the manipulation of photographs, the sensations that have followed and alternated during the management of the period which we are going through. I re-worked both personal and found family photographs, images taken from magazines or downloaded from the internet. I made this choice for several reasons: first of all the impossibility of leaving the house, visiting new places, and meeting people, prompted me to resort to images already produced. Secondly, in this historical moment, we have assisted to a widespread trend of "look at the past", remember the loved ones, and look back at moments of leisure. Finally, the belonging of the photographs to different eras indicates the heterogeneity of the situations showed, as well as tries to detach the story from a kind of documentary vision, supporting a timeless narrative. The type of interventions I have carried out is varied, open to experimentation and I believe it may reflect how we are constantly looking for new solutions to live with the current reality. The sequence that I am presenting refers to the crossing of various phases that have followed, alternated, and repeated in the emotional sphere of each of us. Among these, I particularly thought about the fear of contact and contagion, the forced distancing, the feeling of anxiety and anguish, the loss of conception of time, the scarcity of contact with reality, up to the perception of cancellation of our identity.

I believe that the lack of encounter with the other and the distrust in which we are living is creating deep voids within us. Our sense of freedom is questioned, the ability to get in touch with our humanity is reduced to a minimum. In other words, we are becoming less human.