h o p s c o t c h

My approach to Street Photography is very intuitive and I’ve always liked to let my work grow freely, without me forcing any direction or themes. It’s a very open process that demands full awareness and fresh eyes, to see the ordinary things of our everyday not just for what they are, but also for what they can become, when photographed. There is a strong sense of play in my Street Photography. It’s a game for me, and the city is my playground. As we grow into adulthood we tend to lose our sense of play. We build walls to appear stronger, more serious, more adult; and so we leave behind that part of us that made us kids, the part that turned our backyard into wonderland and that tree into a fortress. And that ability to fantasize and see the ordinary through a child’s eyes is an essential part of my work. Play, to me, is all about being aware of the moment, and yet totally open to whatever happens. A surprise. A discovery. An eureka moment after connecting the dots. The photos shown here are part of my never-ending (and only) body of work that I call ‘Hopscotch’. The name refers to the well-known street game in which children outline a series of rectangles on the ground and hop through them tossing a small object. They select and frame a piece of ordinary pavement, and that small area suddenly becomes something else in their eyes: home, earth, heaven, etc. It’s a process of transformation in which they elevate the ordinary into the imaginary through a simple and innocent idea. And a quite similar process takes place in my Photography: through candid observation I have to pick and frame small pieces of the everyday and, through an idea (metaphor, symbol or a simple joke) try to elevate them to something else than the ordinary. It is ultimately a group of images that emerge from my constant need to fool around with the monolithic and boring view of reality imposed on us by custom and dogma.