Maschere (Masks)

We all tend to wear masks when dealing with others, and to raise protective shields. A mask to hide the bare essence of our true face, to deny the world who we are. And what we are is nothing but what we feel. We are our feelings. Be it through an unconscious mechanism or an act of will, that is one of the few means of defense, natural and elementary, that we have at our disposal. An ineluctable and irreversible process that we activate automatically as a response to very painful life experiences. We saturate the space around us with barriers and shadows, we feel protected and comforted in them and by them. We hide and deny ourselves, because we don't want to expose the fragility of our skin, because we are afraid to reveal the vulnerability of our soul. I have photographed people and landscapes, filling the space, filling the distance between the camera lens and the subject (with his or her inscrutable identity) with window panes, mirrors, bars, hands... trying to give an allegorical representation of the notion of mask. The mask as an allegory of the need to defend ourselves. The mask as a protection we wear, even at the perverse risk of identifying ourselves with it and become our own fake face.