ZZ. In the project Front you assume very diverse roles. How was it to adopt these different roles and to integrate yourself in such a way as to go unnoticed?

TM. The work was made over a 2 year period in which I became pregnant and had my first child, so my body shape was in constant flux.  The period where I was obviously pregnant was over the winter, so no beach shots could be done, but I gained and lost 20kg (really!) which meant that my face changed a lot as well as my body.  I think this helps the viewer assume they are seeing a different person in each picture on first viewing.  It usually takes a while for them to realise it is the same person in each image.  I also think that the language of photography is very familiar to everyone, even on a subconscious level.  So when presented with a picture of 'a family' we have no reason to think that the photograph is anything else.  People even see 'family resemblance' in these photographs where there is none.  I also realised fairly early on in the process that in order to get people to receive my request to be part of an art project about families positively, I needed to already look like I was part of their tribe before I even approached them.  If I didn't, then they usually rejected my request.  So on my beach trips, I always carried a large bag of clothes.  I would scout the beach quietly and pick a family who I wanted to work with, then change my clothes so that I would fit in before I approached them.

ZZ. Which aspects of your own identity do you find in each representation that you do of another person?

TM. I think it is no coincidence that I was newly pregnant when I started this project.  In some ways, subconsiously I was 'trying on' motherhood, or in the pictures of groups of friends, I was imagining how life might carry on if I did not become a mother.

ZZ. Do you seek to provoke something in particular when you take people out of their context and replace them? How did people react to seeing themselves being replaced by you and to observe their lives from a distance, without them being present?

TM. I am using the beach as a metaphor for borders, boundaries and edges.  The family unit has both physical and psychological boundaries, the beach is the border between culture and order (the land) and nature and chaos (the sea).  By asking to be photographed with the family, and for the mother to come out of the picture and become the photographer, I am disrupting this boundary.  It was a very strange feeling for the woman to do this, and I think because I was asking people who were more or less my own age and because I am a woman (I don't think a man would have the same success asking to be the father figure in the picture, and asking the man to step away from his family) and we had a rapport, the pictures were possible.  One woman said 'Oh my God, it is as if I have died and my husband has a new wife!)

ZZ. In the project Front you assume very diverse roles. How was it to adopt these different roles and to integrate yourself in such a way as to go unnoticed?

TM. The work was made over a 2 year period in which I became pregnant and had my first child, so my body shape was in constant flux.  The period where I was obviously pregnant was over the winter, so no beach shots could be done, but I gained and lost 20kg (really!) which meant that my face changed a lot as well as my body.  I think this helps the viewer assume they are seeing a different person in each picture on first viewing.  It usually takes a while for them to realise it is the same person in each image.  I also think that the language of photography is very familiar to everyone, even on a subconscious level.  So when presented with a picture of 'a family' we have no reason to think that the photograph is anything else.  People even see 'family resemblance' in these photographs where there is none.  I also realised fairly early on in the process that in order to get people to receive my request to be part of an art project about families positively, I needed to already look like I was part of their tribe before I even approached them.  If I didn't, then they usually rejected my request.  So on my beach trips, I always carried a large bag of clothes.  I would scout the beach quietly and pick a family who I wanted to work with, then change my clothes so that I would fit in before I approached them.

ZZ. Which aspects of your own identity do you find in each representation that you do of another person?

TM. I think it is no coincidence that I was newly pregnant when I started this project.  In some ways, subconsiously I was 'trying on' motherhood, or in the pictures of groups of friends, I was imagining how life might carry on if I did not become a mother.

ZZ. Do you seek to provoke something in particular when you take people out of their context and replace them? How did people react to seeing themselves being replaced by you and to observe their lives from a distance, without them being present?

TM. I am using the beach as a metaphor for borders, boundaries and edges.  The family unit has both physical and psychological boundaries, the beach is the border between culture and order (the land) and nature and chaos (the sea).  By asking to be photographed with the family, and for the mother to come out of the picture and become the photographer, I am disrupting this boundary.  It was a very strange feeling for the woman to do this, and I think because I was asking people who were more or less my own age and because I am a woman (I don't think a man would have the same success asking to be the father figure in the picture, and asking the man to step away from his family) and we had a rapport, the pictures were possible.  One woman said 'Oh my God, it is as if I have died and my husband has a new wife!)

The search of an ideal self
by Annemarie Bas

Speaking of the theme of this issue, Liquid Identity, one could say Pyuupiru is its embodiment. She was born as a male, but gradually realised that she didn’t feel comfortable with her body. She started wearing eccentric costumes that distorted her figure. And in 2007 she decided to take it a step further and get sex reassignment surgery, an experience that inspired her Self-portrait Series.

Identity, for Pyuupiru, is something that is constantly being developed and changed. In an interview she said:

“As time goes by, we grow both qualitatively and quantitatively, expanding our capacity. We continue to add various elements and new points of view to our personality, until we are like a bunch of grapes. I think this is the life of people from birth to death.”¹

In this way, identity is not a fixed quality, one is constantly adding new elements to one’s personality, moulding it, giving it a new shape, perfecting it, searching for an ideal self. This process is not limited to the mind. The body can also be reshaped, so that it is in harmony with one’s identity.

Pyuupiru described the relationship between body and identity as follows:

“For me, the body is like a vase made of fragile glass. Liquid is an emotion of various colours poured in the vase, and identity is a will to make one pour the liquid into it. You know that the glass changes its shape when heat is added. And you know you choose what you wear by your will. Just like that I’ve transformed my body by my will, both internally and externally. It required me to reveal my very emotion. Emotion is just like a heat having various temperatures, and everyone has it.”²

The discord between body and mind, that Pyuupiru had felt since childhood, has been an incentive for her to make art. In her artistic work, her life experiences and emotions are vital. She keeps them bottled inside of her until they boil, provoking a creative explosion which is then transformed into art.

When she made the Self-portrait Series, she thought of the oppression she felt due to her gender dilemmas: first she thought of her memories and experiences of pain, such as her memories of boyhood and the nightmares caused by hormone replacement therapy and psychoactive drugs. She focused on them up to the point where she felt she had re-lived the suffering enough. Then she filtered those memories and experiences through her sense of beauty in order to be able to shape the characters in her work from the inside and the outside. After that, Pyuupiru, photographed and materialised these characters.

The result is a series of self-portraits which are very intense and personal (despite the fact that in some of the portraits she hides her face with cosmetics, wigs and masks). Exposing her true identity in this way, Pyuupiru tells us, came with a heavy price. Even so, she feels that an artist can gain a pleasure from this exploration that is beyond its costs. Therefore she will certainly continue to share her experiences and feelings through her art in a constant quest to come to grips with the mystery of identity.

_{1. Fleur Pierets, Pyuupiru in: Et Alors? Magazine, magazine special: GenderBlender (jun.-ago. 2014) 32-39, p.39.
http://issuu.com/etalorsmagazinespecials/docs/genderblender_issuu}

_{2. Owen Leong, Interview with Pyuupiru in: Peril, Asian-Australian Arts and Culture, no. 8 - Why are people so unkind? (nov. 2009).
http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition08/interview-with-pyuupiru/}
 

_{Annemarie Bas (The Netherlands, 1986), has a Bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Utrecht and a Master’s degree in Cultural History at the same institution. As a historian, she worked as a junior researcher at the Museum of Psychiatry "Het Dolhuys" in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Since 2013, she lives and works in Mexico City. At the moment, she is international liaison at ZoneZero and works as an independent translator.}
 

The search of an ideal self
by Annemarie Bas

Speaking of the theme of this issue, Liquid Identity, one could say Pyuupiru is its embodiment. She was born as a male, but gradually realised that she didn’t feel comfortable with her body. She started wearing eccentric costumes that distorted her figure. And in 2007 she decided to take it a step further and get sex reassignment surgery, an experience that inspired her Self-portrait Series.

Identity, for Pyuupiru, is something that is constantly being developed and changed. In an interview she said:

“As time goes by, we grow both qualitatively and quantitatively, expanding our capacity. We continue to add various elements and new points of view to our personality, until we are like a bunch of grapes. I think this is the life of people from birth to death.”¹

In this way, identity is not a fixed quality, one is constantly adding new elements to one’s personality, moulding it, giving it a new shape, perfecting it, searching for an ideal self. This process is not limited to the mind. The body can also be reshaped, so that it is in harmony with one’s identity.

Pyuupiru described the relationship between body and identity as follows:

“For me, the body is like a vase made of fragile glass. Liquid is an emotion of various colours poured in the vase, and identity is a will to make one pour the liquid into it. You know that the glass changes its shape when heat is added. And you know you choose what you wear by your will. Just like that I’ve transformed my body by my will, both internally and externally. It required me to reveal my very emotion. Emotion is just like a heat having various temperatures, and everyone has it.”²

The discord between body and mind, that Pyuupiru had felt since childhood, has been an incentive for her to make art. In her artistic work, her life experiences and emotions are vital. She keeps them bottled inside of her until they boil, provoking a creative explosion which is then transformed into art.

When she made the Self-portrait Series, she thought of the oppression she felt due to her gender dilemmas: first she thought of her memories and experiences of pain, such as her memories of boyhood and the nightmares caused by hormone replacement therapy and psychoactive drugs. She focused on them up to the point where she felt she had re-lived the suffering enough. Then she filtered those memories and experiences through her sense of beauty in order to be able to shape the characters in her work from the inside and the outside. After that, Pyuupiru, photographed and materialised these characters.

The result is a series of self-portraits which are very intense and personal (despite the fact that in some of the portraits she hides her face with cosmetics, wigs and masks). Exposing her true identity in this way, Pyuupiru tells us, came with a heavy price. Even so, she feels that an artist can gain a pleasure from this exploration that is beyond its costs. Therefore she will certainly continue to share her experiences and feelings through her art in a constant quest to come to grips with the mystery of identity.

_{1. Fleur Pierets, Pyuupiru in: Et Alors? Magazine, magazine special: GenderBlender (jun.-ago. 2014) 32-39, p.39.
http://issuu.com/etalorsmagazinespecials/docs/genderblender_issuu}

_{2. Owen Leong, Interview with Pyuupiru in: Peril, Asian-Australian Arts and Culture, no. 8 - Why are people so unkind? (nov. 2009).
http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition08/interview-with-pyuupiru/}
 

_{Annemarie Bas (The Netherlands, 1986), has a Bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Utrecht and a Master’s degree in Cultural History at the same institution. As a historian, she worked as a junior researcher at the Museum of Psychiatry "Het Dolhuys" in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Since 2013, she lives and works in Mexico City. At the moment, she is international liaison at ZoneZero and works as an independent translator.}
 

Considered a visual artist, interactive narrator and Internet anthropologist, Harris is interested in the fragments and feelings of intimate stories, and our need to express ourselves. He converses with the viewer through images and technology, interconnected them to his own artistic universe.

In his essay Navigating Stuckness, which consists of texts and illustrations, Harris shares an autobiographical journey, describing the successive stages of his development as a creator and how he has forced himself to surpass and rediscover himself. ZoneZero has chosen two projects from these various stages, to present a sample of the enormous variety and diversity of his platforms of expression, as a glimpse of his versatile artwork.

The first is Today, photographs documenting the 440 days that followed Harris’s 30th birthday, defining a self-portrait of his everyday life and transforming this process into a ritual. In the second, Balloons of Buthan, he presents portraits of happiness in the last Himalayan kingdom, Bhutan. He uses photographs and audio testimonials to address universal concerns, and records action through an interactive platform in which we can approach each of the 117 persons he met.

These are only two examples, showing two principal lines of Harris’s artistic activity. One of these is realizing that in order to approach other people and depend on them, we must pause to know and speak about ourselves. The other line is interpreting how we can converge with technology as the best means of telling stories, thus creating platforms that give order to human chaos in our globalized, Internet-centered world.

Harris is perhaps one of the most sensitive artists present online, whose projects can inspire us to continue our own pursuit of visual communication. The ZoneZero team therefore presents an interview with him, to provide an insight into the processes involved in his work.

_{Jonathan Harris (USA, 1979). Lives and works in New York, though he undertakes some of his projects in others parts of the world. Balloons of Buthan, for example, was produced in Buthan, Himalaya. An artist and computer scientist, his work explores the relationship between humans and technology. He graduated in Computer Science and Photography from Princeton University. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the world and has earned several prizes and awards. It can be viewed at: Number27}

Regarding the development of your projects, could you tell us what's the place of the concept and what role does your selected media play?
For me, projects tend to start with a concept — usually something simple and communicable in a single sentence (e.g. “A search engine for feelings” (We Feel Fine), “A public library of human experience” (Cowbird), “An expression of single moments in time” (10x10). From there, I spend a lot of time developing the idea on paper (in my sketchbook). This process is iterative, and can take a long time. I’ll usually try a lot of different angles and approaches, and many of them won’t feel right, so I’ll keep trying different things, all the while keeping in mind that single-sentence description, which is like the soul of the idea, and that soul should never change. At some point, I’ll decide on an angle (e.g. search for the phrase “I feel”; constrain stories to text and a single image; scrape news websites every hour for 100 words and pictures; etc.), and will start collecting data. Then, there's the process of developing a relationship with that data, which is almost like learning the ways of a lover — to try to understand its secrets (i.e. what about it is beautiful and interesting). Once you learn its secrets, then you can design interfaces that reveal those secrets to others. That is what makes something feel poetic, and what makes it come alive.

On your most recent work, what are the topics or concerns that move you to start and develop a new project?
Currently, I’m interested in the evolution of the human species into a single meta-organism, in which we all take part, like cells in a body. I’m interested in the nature of that meta-organism — its emotions, its thoughts, its desires, its choices.

With the constant changes on technology and projects that rely so much on it, do you worry about obsolescence? How do you deal with that risk?
Working with technology, obsolescence is unavoidable. Already, some of my earlier projects are difficult or impossible to see — most browsers no longer support Java applets by default, so to view We Feel Fine, visitors must download and install a plugin; the company whose news API powered Universe was acquired and no longer exists, so that project is sadly offline. Nowadays, I try to use open source technologies (HTML5, Javascript, WebGL, etc.), which are less likely to become obsolete than proprietary technologies like Java and Flash.

On an aesthetic level, obsolescence is also a danger, but this kind of obsolescence is related to the homogenizing effect of popular tools. For instance, when many people use a tool like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash, or even a service like Instagram, the shortcuts enabled by the tool will, over time, have a homogenizing effect on the projects that people use the tool to create. Because of this, many digital projects quickly look dated — they are timely, but not timeless. To avoid this, I try to design all my interfaces from scratch, not relying on shortcuts enabled by tools, but generated programmatically by code I write myself. So, for example, the typography in The Whale Hunt is custom-designed to be bisected by whaling harpoons. In Universe, all the typography is formed by star constellations. When you write stuff from scratch (using open source tools), you have a better chance at avoiding obsolescence.

You can learn more about Harris's concerns and obsessions by visiting number27.org

Considered a visual artist, interactive narrator and Internet anthropologist, Harris is interested in the fragments and feelings of intimate stories, and our need to express ourselves. He converses with the viewer through images and technology, interconnected them to his own artistic universe.

In his essay Navigating Stuckness, which consists of texts and illustrations, Harris shares an autobiographical journey, describing the successive stages of his development as a creator and how he has forced himself to surpass and rediscover himself. ZoneZero has chosen two projects from these various stages, to present a sample of the enormous variety and diversity of his platforms of expression, as a glimpse of his versatile artwork.

The first is Today, photographs documenting the 440 days that followed Harris’s 30th birthday, defining a self-portrait of his everyday life and transforming this process into a ritual. In the second, Balloons of Buthan, he presents portraits of happiness in the last Himalayan kingdom, Bhutan. He uses photographs and audio testimonials to address universal concerns, and records action through an interactive platform in which we can approach each of the 117 persons he met.

These are only two examples, showing two principal lines of Harris’s artistic activity. One of these is realizing that in order to approach other people and depend on them, we must pause to know and speak about ourselves. The other line is interpreting how we can converge with technology as the best means of telling stories, thus creating platforms that give order to human chaos in our globalized, Internet-centered world.

Harris is perhaps one of the most sensitive artists present online, whose projects can inspire us to continue our own pursuit of visual communication. The ZoneZero team therefore presents an interview with him, to provide an insight into the processes involved in his work.

_{Jonathan Harris (USA, 1979). Lives and works in New York, though he undertakes some of his projects in others parts of the world. Balloons of Buthan, for example, was produced in Buthan, Himalaya. An artist and computer scientist, his work explores the relationship between humans and technology. He graduated in Computer Science and Photography from Princeton University. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the world and has earned several prizes and awards. It can be viewed at: Number27}

Regarding the development of your projects, could you tell us what's the place of the concept and what role does your selected media play?
For me, projects tend to start with a concept — usually something simple and communicable in a single sentence (e.g. “A search engine for feelings” (We Feel Fine), “A public library of human experience” (Cowbird), “An expression of single moments in time” (10x10). From there, I spend a lot of time developing the idea on paper (in my sketchbook). This process is iterative, and can take a long time. I’ll usually try a lot of different angles and approaches, and many of them won’t feel right, so I’ll keep trying different things, all the while keeping in mind that single-sentence description, which is like the soul of the idea, and that soul should never change. At some point, I’ll decide on an angle (e.g. search for the phrase “I feel”; constrain stories to text and a single image; scrape news websites every hour for 100 words and pictures; etc.), and will start collecting data. Then, there's the process of developing a relationship with that data, which is almost like learning the ways of a lover — to try to understand its secrets (i.e. what about it is beautiful and interesting). Once you learn its secrets, then you can design interfaces that reveal those secrets to others. That is what makes something feel poetic, and what makes it come alive.

On your most recent work, what are the topics or concerns that move you to start and develop a new project?
Currently, I’m interested in the evolution of the human species into a single meta-organism, in which we all take part, like cells in a body. I’m interested in the nature of that meta-organism — its emotions, its thoughts, its desires, its choices.

With the constant changes on technology and projects that rely so much on it, do you worry about obsolescence? How do you deal with that risk?
Working with technology, obsolescence is unavoidable. Already, some of my earlier projects are difficult or impossible to see — most browsers no longer support Java applets by default, so to view We Feel Fine, visitors must download and install a plugin; the company whose news API powered Universe was acquired and no longer exists, so that project is sadly offline. Nowadays, I try to use open source technologies (HTML5, Javascript, WebGL, etc.), which are less likely to become obsolete than proprietary technologies like Java and Flash.

On an aesthetic level, obsolescence is also a danger, but this kind of obsolescence is related to the homogenizing effect of popular tools. For instance, when many people use a tool like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash, or even a service like Instagram, the shortcuts enabled by the tool will, over time, have a homogenizing effect on the projects that people use the tool to create. Because of this, many digital projects quickly look dated — they are timely, but not timeless. To avoid this, I try to design all my interfaces from scratch, not relying on shortcuts enabled by tools, but generated programmatically by code I write myself. So, for example, the typography in The Whale Hunt is custom-designed to be bisected by whaling harpoons. In Universe, all the typography is formed by star constellations. When you write stuff from scratch (using open source tools), you have a better chance at avoiding obsolescence.

You can learn more about Harris's concerns and obsessions by visiting number27.org

# 01

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

The Gates of Hell

Through me the way to the city of woe,

Through me the way to eternal pain,

Through me the way among the lost.

vv. 1-3

 

# 02

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

Slothful

… ‘This miserable state is borne

by the wretched souls of those who lived

without disgrace yet without praise.’

vv. 34-36

 

# 03

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

Crossing of the Acheron

‘all those who die in the wrath of God

assemble here from every land.

And they are eager to cross the river,

for the justice of God so spurs them on

their very fear is turned to longing.’

vv. 122-126

 

# 04

Canto IV, Circle I

Limbo

Thus he went first and had me enter

the first circle girding the abyss.

Here, as far as I could tell by listening,

was no lamentation other than the sighs

that kept the air forever trembling.

These came from grief without torment.

vv. 23-28

 

# 05

Canto V, Circle II

Lustful

As doves, summoned by desire, their wings

outstretched and motionless, move on the air,

borne by their will to the sweet nest

vv. 82-84

 

# 06

Canto VI, Circle III

Gluttonous

The rain makes them howl like dogs

The unholy wretches often turn their bodies,

making of one side a shield for the other.

vv. 19-21

 

# 07

Canto VII, Circle IV

Avaricious

Here the sinners were more numerous than

elsewhere,

and they, with great shouts, from opposite sides

were shoving burdens forward with their chests.

vv. 25-27

 

# 08

Canto VII, Circle V

Wrathful and Sullen

And I, my gaze transfixed, could see

people with angry faces in that bog,

naked, their bodies smeared with mud.

vv. 109-111

 

# 09

Canto IX, Circle VI

Heretics

And he: ‘Here, with all their followers,

are the arch-heretics of every sect.

The tombs are far more laden than you think…’

vv. 127-129

 

# 10

Canto X, Circle VI

Farinata degli Umberti, Heretics

Already I had fixed my gaze on his.

And he was rising, lifting chest and brow

as though he held all Hell in utter scorn.

vv. 34-36

 

# 11

Canto XIII, Circle VII, Ring II

Suicides

We will come to claim our cast-off bodies

like the others. But it would not be just if we again

put on the flesh we robbed from our own souls.

Here shall we drag it, and in this dismal wood

our bodies will be hung, each one

upon the thorn-bush of its painful shade.

vv. 103-108

 

# 12

Canto XVIII, Circle VIII, Bolgia II

Flatterers, Thaïs

And then my leader said to me: ‘Try to thrust

your face a little farther forward,

to get a better picture of the features

of that foul, dishevelled wench down there,

scratching herself with her filthy nails.

Now she squats and now she’s standing up…’

vv. 127-132

 

# 13

Canto XIX, Circle VIII, Bolgia III

Simoniacs

From the mouth of each stuck out

a sinner’s feet and legs up to the thighs

while all the rest stayed in the hole.

vv. 22-24

 

# 14

Canto XXIX, Circle VIII, Bolgia X

Counterfeiters

Some lay upon the bellies or the backs

of others, still others dragged themselves

on hands and knees along that gloomy path.

Step by step we went ahead in silence,

looking and listening to the stricken spirits,

who could not raise their bodies from the ground.

vv. 67-72

 

# 15

Canto XXX, Circle VIII, Bolgia X

Counterfeiters, Master Adam

he said, ‘behold and then consider

the suffering of Master Adam.

Alive, I had in plenty all I wanted.

And now I crave a single drop of water!’

vv. 60-63

 

Inferno is a set of surrealistic scenes recreating Dante’s journey through the strata of hell. The protagonists, who represent some passages of the poem, are inhabitants of the photographer’s town, Tolfa. Italy. April 2010 - March 2011

ZZ. In which way media like cinema, theatre and literature have had an effect on your photographic projects

VV. The university studies I undertook before my photographic studies concentrated on the cinematographic art, and were within a humanities faculty where theatre and literature were certainly very present subjects. As well as this academic aspect, the experiences I had autonomously and often by chance also nourished my interests in these worlds. I don’t know the exact point these interact with my projects – certainly at the base of my work there is a strong narrative need where it is difficult for me to consider the individual shot in isolation from the whole. In most cases, I develop my story in a particular geographical area, then there is the study of this area and the involvement if its inhabitants, then, I move onto the staging. If I work on a literary text, whether it is Don Quixote or Dante’s Inferno, I start from an in-depth analysis of the text, arriving then at its schematisation, then to its re-composition according to my narrative intent and finally, the creation of a storyboard. I started to use this purely cinematographic technique not for an intellectual reason but for a question of practicality, putting into practice and adopting in my planning phase this previously studied method that very much facilitates my construction of the narration.

ZZ. In your Inferno series you staged images with non-professional actors from your hometown, what were you looking to trigger and what results did you get?

VV. As I mentioned, in all the projects I have undertaken until now, I have worked on a particular geographical area, with the involvement of its inhabitants for the staging of the stories and often for the planning. I started out with little “experiments” in my hometown – of which Dante’s Inferno represents perhaps a more aware phase – then concentrating on attempting to take this experiment outside my territorial borders. So followed Living Layers, a project on a Roman neighbourhood, born in collaboration with the Wunderkammern Gallery and Rome’s MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome), and Riviere, which I just completed for the Bellaria Film Festival, in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. In my research, I try to deepen my study of the areas where I am working and particularly, to seek out collaborations with the people who live there, not just for interpreting characters in the story but also for the construction of the story, whether on a practical or narrative level.

Dante’s Inferno is from 2011 and it came after other projects where I worked in my native Tolfa, a small town north of Rome. It is a more mature project compared with those that came before, both for my work on the literary text and on its inhabitants. The study and planning phase took a long time – the study and the decomposition of a text of such poetic intellect required a lot of patience, as did constructing and bringing to conclusion the 15 shots that comprise the work, which took a year. During this time, the project became rooted in the population and in the end the result was a kind of unison. The town was active on a number of fronts, from finding materials and garments for the scenes, to the involvement of other extras and suggesting locations they had seen during their days working in the fields. It is a project that very much fed my interest in this type of research, which I continue to take forward in its variations.

ZZ. How has this experience influenced your current interests?

VV. This type of experience repeats itself in different ways in almost all of my work. Looking for an interaction with a place and its inhabitants is the point I seek keep constant in my stories. Just a few weeks ago, I finished new work on an area that I had never visited before then – the Romagnola Riviera, on the coast of the Emilia Romagna region. During the summer time, it transforms into an hive of tourists, with hundreds of geometrically placed and chaotically crowded beach umbrellas, boat trips, bocce matches, lunches at the pensione, and theme parks – a very noisy world which, during the winter, suddenly disappears and makes way for something even more surreal, and my arrival happened exactly at that moment: the Romagnola Riviera in winter, a great sleeping city where everything is suspended on the edge of waiting; the Riviera in the off season: pastel coloured rows of closed hotels and pensiones, enormous plastic play and games equipment and palm trees wrapped in transparent towelling on the beach, everything protected in sleep. More than the taste of waiting, every element seemed to recall something that had been infinite before, in a timeless age. In this temporal suspension, retired fishermen, dancers from the dance hall of the centre for the elderly, new friends and hoteliers ferried me through this new story, entitled Riviere. The story begins from an investigation into facts that actually occurred in the 1960s – the construction of an island in the neighbouring Adriatic waters and its bombing by the Italian state – events that weave in with the story of my grandparents and their photographic archive from 1990 to 2000, and finishes with my arrival at Rimini station in January 2014.

# 01

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

The Gates of Hell

Through me the way to the city of woe,

Through me the way to eternal pain,

Through me the way among the lost.

vv. 1-3

 

# 02

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

Slothful

… ‘This miserable state is borne

by the wretched souls of those who lived

without disgrace yet without praise.’

vv. 34-36

 

# 03

Canto III, Ante-Inferno

Crossing of the Acheron

‘all those who die in the wrath of God

assemble here from every land.

And they are eager to cross the river,

for the justice of God so spurs them on

their very fear is turned to longing.’

vv. 122-126

 

# 04

Canto IV, Circle I

Limbo

Thus he went first and had me enter

the first circle girding the abyss.

Here, as far as I could tell by listening,

was no lamentation other than the sighs

that kept the air forever trembling.

These came from grief without torment.

vv. 23-28

 

# 05

Canto V, Circle II

Lustful

As doves, summoned by desire, their wings

outstretched and motionless, move on the air,

borne by their will to the sweet nest

vv. 82-84

 

# 06

Canto VI, Circle III

Gluttonous

The rain makes them howl like dogs

The unholy wretches often turn their bodies,

making of one side a shield for the other.

vv. 19-21

 

# 07

Canto VII, Circle IV

Avaricious

Here the sinners were more numerous than

elsewhere,

and they, with great shouts, from opposite sides

were shoving burdens forward with their chests.

vv. 25-27

 

# 08

Canto VII, Circle V

Wrathful and Sullen

And I, my gaze transfixed, could see

people with angry faces in that bog,

naked, their bodies smeared with mud.

vv. 109-111

 

# 09

Canto IX, Circle VI

Heretics

And he: ‘Here, with all their followers,

are the arch-heretics of every sect.

The tombs are far more laden than you think…’

vv. 127-129

 

# 10

Canto X, Circle VI

Farinata degli Umberti, Heretics

Already I had fixed my gaze on his.

And he was rising, lifting chest and brow

as though he held all Hell in utter scorn.

vv. 34-36

 

# 11

Canto XIII, Circle VII, Ring II

Suicides

We will come to claim our cast-off bodies

like the others. But it would not be just if we again

put on the flesh we robbed from our own souls.

Here shall we drag it, and in this dismal wood

our bodies will be hung, each one

upon the thorn-bush of its painful shade.

vv. 103-108

 

# 12

Canto XVIII, Circle VIII, Bolgia II

Flatterers, Thaïs

And then my leader said to me: ‘Try to thrust

your face a little farther forward,

to get a better picture of the features

of that foul, dishevelled wench down there,

scratching herself with her filthy nails.

Now she squats and now she’s standing up…’

vv. 127-132

 

# 13

Canto XIX, Circle VIII, Bolgia III

Simoniacs

From the mouth of each stuck out

a sinner’s feet and legs up to the thighs

while all the rest stayed in the hole.

vv. 22-24

 

# 14

Canto XXIX, Circle VIII, Bolgia X

Counterfeiters

Some lay upon the bellies or the backs

of others, still others dragged themselves

on hands and knees along that gloomy path.

Step by step we went ahead in silence,

looking and listening to the stricken spirits,

who could not raise their bodies from the ground.

vv. 67-72

 

# 15

Canto XXX, Circle VIII, Bolgia X

Counterfeiters, Master Adam

he said, ‘behold and then consider

the suffering of Master Adam.

Alive, I had in plenty all I wanted.

And now I crave a single drop of water!’

vv. 60-63

 

Inferno is a set of surrealistic scenes recreating Dante’s journey through the strata of hell. The protagonists, who represent some passages of the poem, are inhabitants of the photographer’s town, Tolfa. Italy. April 2010 - March 2011

ZZ. In which way media like cinema, theatre and literature have had an effect on your photographic projects

VV. The university studies I undertook before my photographic studies concentrated on the cinematographic art, and were within a humanities faculty where theatre and literature were certainly very present subjects. As well as this academic aspect, the experiences I had autonomously and often by chance also nourished my interests in these worlds. I don’t know the exact point these interact with my projects – certainly at the base of my work there is a strong narrative need where it is difficult for me to consider the individual shot in isolation from the whole. In most cases, I develop my story in a particular geographical area, then there is the study of this area and the involvement if its inhabitants, then, I move onto the staging. If I work on a literary text, whether it is Don Quixote or Dante’s Inferno, I start from an in-depth analysis of the text, arriving then at its schematisation, then to its re-composition according to my narrative intent and finally, the creation of a storyboard. I started to use this purely cinematographic technique not for an intellectual reason but for a question of practicality, putting into practice and adopting in my planning phase this previously studied method that very much facilitates my construction of the narration.

ZZ. In your Inferno series you staged images with non-professional actors from your hometown, what were you looking to trigger and what results did you get?

VV. As I mentioned, in all the projects I have undertaken until now, I have worked on a particular geographical area, with the involvement of its inhabitants for the staging of the stories and often for the planning. I started out with little “experiments” in my hometown – of which Dante’s Inferno represents perhaps a more aware phase – then concentrating on attempting to take this experiment outside my territorial borders. So followed Living Layers, a project on a Roman neighbourhood, born in collaboration with the Wunderkammern Gallery and Rome’s MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome), and Riviere, which I just completed for the Bellaria Film Festival, in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. In my research, I try to deepen my study of the areas where I am working and particularly, to seek out collaborations with the people who live there, not just for interpreting characters in the story but also for the construction of the story, whether on a practical or narrative level.

Dante’s Inferno is from 2011 and it came after other projects where I worked in my native Tolfa, a small town north of Rome. It is a more mature project compared with those that came before, both for my work on the literary text and on its inhabitants. The study and planning phase took a long time – the study and the decomposition of a text of such poetic intellect required a lot of patience, as did constructing and bringing to conclusion the 15 shots that comprise the work, which took a year. During this time, the project became rooted in the population and in the end the result was a kind of unison. The town was active on a number of fronts, from finding materials and garments for the scenes, to the involvement of other extras and suggesting locations they had seen during their days working in the fields. It is a project that very much fed my interest in this type of research, which I continue to take forward in its variations.

ZZ. How has this experience influenced your current interests?

VV. This type of experience repeats itself in different ways in almost all of my work. Looking for an interaction with a place and its inhabitants is the point I seek keep constant in my stories. Just a few weeks ago, I finished new work on an area that I had never visited before then – the Romagnola Riviera, on the coast of the Emilia Romagna region. During the summer time, it transforms into an hive of tourists, with hundreds of geometrically placed and chaotically crowded beach umbrellas, boat trips, bocce matches, lunches at the pensione, and theme parks – a very noisy world which, during the winter, suddenly disappears and makes way for something even more surreal, and my arrival happened exactly at that moment: the Romagnola Riviera in winter, a great sleeping city where everything is suspended on the edge of waiting; the Riviera in the off season: pastel coloured rows of closed hotels and pensiones, enormous plastic play and games equipment and palm trees wrapped in transparent towelling on the beach, everything protected in sleep. More than the taste of waiting, every element seemed to recall something that had been infinite before, in a timeless age. In this temporal suspension, retired fishermen, dancers from the dance hall of the centre for the elderly, new friends and hoteliers ferried me through this new story, entitled Riviere. The story begins from an investigation into facts that actually occurred in the 1960s – the construction of an island in the neighbouring Adriatic waters and its bombing by the Italian state – events that weave in with the story of my grandparents and their photographic archive from 1990 to 2000, and finishes with my arrival at Rimini station in January 2014.

“He linked his life to the bitterness
of those whose only roof is the firmament,
whose only milk is the hard soil,
and whose only pillow is their sad thoughts.”
Ninfa Aracely Manzano,
Beyond my sadness, Popayán, 2009

“He linked his life to the bitterness
of those whose only roof is the firmament,
whose only milk is the hard soil,
and whose only pillow is their sad thoughts.”
Ninfa Aracely Manzano,
Beyond my sadness, Popayán, 2009