Torbola 31

Torbola 31 is a project, initiated during a residency at the Verzasca Foto Festival. With the use of an unique DIY image making device, It playfully reimagines the landscape of the valley. It is an ongoing project that will culminate in a book.

Torbola 31 is part of an applied research project exploring a new hybrid process between photocopying and photography, inspired by the DIY/Xerox tradition. By combining a large-format lens and mirrors with a black and-white laser printer, I transform what is usually a reproduction machine into an image-making tool, with its own particularities and limitations. Each image is printed directly onto A4 paper, bypassing any digital interface, much like a Polaroid.

Despite the technical restrictions of shooting with a printer, this method opens up new creative possibilities, the movement of the scanner replace the shutter of a camera , reprinting over the same sheet with altered settings, or placing objects on the scanner glass to intervene directly in the image..

As a photographer born during the rise of the digital technology, reconnecting with a physical and sensory approach to photography is essential. This project also challenges notions of reproduction and uniqueness, questionning the relationship between and original and a copy.

For this project, I carried my equipment on a trailer attached to a bicycle, pedaling up and down the Verzasca Valley. This mobile setup allowed me to “scan” the landscape, a process that conceptually mirrors the movement of the photocopier’s sensor traveling across the glass. This performance-intensive endeavor pays homage to early mountain photographers who carried heavy wet-plate cameras to capture the peaks.

Rather than embracing the traditional, romanticized view of alpine landscapes, Torbola 31 adopts an anti-sublime approach, grounding an over-sublimated subject matter in the raw and tactile. By responding to the patterns of the land, the project produces a playful reimagining of the Verzasca Valley’s landscape. The resulting images oscillate between representation and abstraction, defying expectations and creating space for interpretation and imagination.