Omnia mutatur, nihil interit
Visiting the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, my gaze focused on what remained of the decorative paintings after the removal of the main ones for conservation and exhibition, particularly at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. What remains of remnants, one might say. Details of what was the imaginary of a culture (bestiary, mythological figures, urban landscapes, scenes of daily life) but degraded, cracked, almost erased, and above all lost or isolated amidst degraded supports or even crudely held together with various cements or mortars. Images that touch us with their power to evoke what were the private and public settings of urban lives frozen by the catastrophe of the volcanic eruption: embers still warm beneath the ashes of time. But this fragility of figuration, evidenced by these ravaged or residual paintings, can also evoke some modern deconstruction of representation: at least, it was with this in mind that I also photographed them.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes) Ovide.
