Hell

Me miserable! which way shall I flie/Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?/Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell" - John Milton, 'Paradise Lost' In the town where I was born in Northern Italy, an ancient pagan festival connected to rural culture called Giöbia or Giubiana is still celebrated nowadays. On the last Thursday of January the puppet of an old witch, metaphor of the past year, is burnt as a propitiatory rite for the new year.. Whilst shooting these photographs I could not help but abandon myself to high school memories of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, tales by Poe and Lovecraft. At the same time, recollections of horror filmography crossed my thoughts too. Feeling the strong heat of fire on my face and my hands and the mud under my boots, the mind wandered towards fantasies inevitably linked to the idea of hell. The pictures you can see here, as well as a short story that is unpublished to date, are the synthesis of my journey through these thoughts, a work of editing that has been refined over three years (2015-2018). The tale is about a forced journey through the fire in which the lead encounters his deeper fears, coming out every time weaker, until the last defeat. The idea is that he is living an “infernal punishment” in which he is fighting himself, in an infinite cycle. I wrote the story in first person because I'd love the viewer can identify himself better with the main character. I'd like to present it in a book in which each photos will be accompanied by his part of tale.