SCARECROWS

Scarecrows is a performative installation project. Each portrayed subject was the protagonist of an individual, specifically tailored makeover (vintage clothes, straw, wood, and digitally printed, hand-crafted masks) and site-specific photoshoot in the wheat fields of Santa Luce (Tuscany), during the most torrid European summer in recent memory (July-August, 2022). The series was inspired by personal observation of the repercussions that the extreme drought and the increasing climate emergency are producing in the agricultural and rural economies. The cathartic quality evoked by a scarecrow is at the foundation of this project aimed at symbolically resurrecting the faces of some of the most prominent stars of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age, a period of tremendous growth, experimentation, and change in the industry that brought international prestige to Hollywood and its movie stars in the late 1920s, during the Great Depression (and continuing through to the early 1960s): a time of cinematic proficiency that produced several of the masterworks included in today’s infamous lists of films branded by cancel culture as having “outdated attitudes, language, and cultural depiction.” The Scarecrows project intends to suggest a reflection on the importance of nourishing and preserving the collective creative culture that has made us who we are, shaping our taste, knowledge, and experience as a global society, and contributing to the evolution of modern social standards, often through controversy. The Scarecrows series is part of HBA – Human Beyond Appearances, an ongoing collection of photographic projects focused on exploring the expressive and evocative potential of non-animated beings. Previous projects include Mila, the oversized mannequin (The Mila Project, 2014); Scarlett, the cardboard stand-up (Light America: American Wanderings of a Cardboard Stand-up, 2008-2009); Venus, the resin sculpture (The Venus Project, 2020); the digital, non-existing persons (The Algonauts, 2022); and, more recently, the Hollywood scarecrows (Scarecrows, 2022).