CoPix19

Mind and body wandering during the lockdown.

When it began it was like being in a sci-fi movie. It was an interesting new experience. We were living an adventure. Especially here in Lombardia: we were in the news! After China there was Italy. Worried friends outside of Italy were sending messages asking what was going on here. 

To be clear, I know it was not the best reason to be in the news or to be excited. But it was, oddly, kind of exciting, at the very beginning at least. ‘Just a couple of weeks’, we were thinking. ‘Not so bad after all’.  (click to read more)

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In the mean time, the 6:30pm report from the authorities was getting more dramatic day after day. The new infection figures and the death toll were quickly rising rather than improving. The news of the situation in the hospitals was even worse. The mood was changing. ‘What is really going on? Are we safe in our houses? Has anyone I know got infected? Is it ever going to end?’ 

Amid these sorts of thoughts and emotions, I felt the urge to take some pictures, also, in part, to kill the boredom of being locked up at home. Usually I take pictures of people and places but in this situation both were far out of reach. In any case, I thought that I had to use my camera, as a means of surviving. The closest to ‘people’ was myself. The closest to being outside, in some other place, was the window. These became primary elements in many pictures. When an idea for a picture came to mind, I set up the camera and took several shots – thoughts and feelings I tried to represent using myself or the available objects around me. When something interesting on the news caught my attention – a delegation of doctors from Cuba flies all over Italy to help – I find a Cuban cigar and use it in a picture. The result was a kind of stream of consciousness through photography. 

The cyclamen on the balcony were my only direct and safe contact with nature. But the season was changing, and the cyclamen were losing their flowers: a perfect, though dark, analogy of the situation we were experiencing. It definitely needed to be explored with the camera. The resulting images of flowers floating in a confined space, encapsulated for me our confined souls in those days. 

At the time of shooting, I honestly never thought these images would be of any interest – just a kind of intimate research while we were stuck at home. But as I took new pictures, I was posting them on my Instagram profile and, to my surprise, getting some positive feedback. Nevertheless, at first look, I felt that the images couldn’t work put together. 

When the lockdown had been lifted, and we could finally meet other people, a friend told me he really loved what I was posting on Instagram. He asked if he could set up an exhibition of the images in the place he manages. Even though I wasn’t initially convinced of the idea, I started working on it anyway. Then, while editing the photos, reorganizing the stream of consciousness in a more logical order, I was surprised to see something emerging, that it was actually possible to find a way to tell a story of those days through these strange images. Though these are absolutely uncharacteristic images for me, I think they tell more about the experience and the underlying feelings than I was aware at the time. Now that we are back to normality I am slowly realizing that the whole experience was much deeper and intense than I thought while we were living it. 

If these are good photos or not, I don’t know; but I feel now that I would never have come out with such a set of images in any other circumstances.