From The Black of Their Faces

From the black of their faces The presence of man can not be separated from any reality representation, as any reality representation is also and always a representation of man. Even inside apparently inanimate objects or places flow the life stories of the people that have created, owned, run across, watched or even only touched them. This is why in photography the presence of man is in every picture, and right for this, portrait, in which this humanity is in focus, there is a strenght of this “representable human” that has no equal. I have always been tremendously fascinated from man as a narration and, in a time of very strong eye pollution, rush, superficiality, visual bulimia and forgetfulness (that is the contrary of photography), i love to go back looking man with no hurry into his eyes. This portfolio of images collects the glances of workers of a foundry in Italy and arises from the possibility to enter the foundry as my grandfather, himself portraied in the images, has founded and frequented it all of his lifetime. The meaning of the pictures certainly does not lies in places but in people, but i liked the idea that in this foundry, in this dusty and coal dark place, from the covered in soot ovens, shadows and from the black of their faces emerge or better come to light these beings, to which photography gives back a thousand stories to travel over with eyes. Portrait allows to watch others and to catch their essence, that is ours in the end. We must choose a speed of watching and begin to travel: travel is as huge as we are. Because, as we stare at the subjects of the photographs, we ourselves become the subjects of those that from the pictures are watching us and the richness of our travel is as huge as our memory of the things and of the world we keep inside us.