COOL GREY 4 (a new) U
I’ve always been sure that, in certain fields, for linguistical, literary, and iconic reasons, word should stop and make room for Photography.
Here’s why in such difficult times, caused both by social unbalance and by the unstoppable spread of COVID-19, any “Pandemic Alphabet” cannot be separated from its image. Pictures are icons, seeds that sprout into thoughts, transform experiences and convey the synthesis of an individual’s abilities to create their own laws, their own religion and wisdom (while they live silently in a deaf, soundproof world).
In each one of these pictures I’ve tried to point out what to preserve, enhancing the ambiguity and the conflict between the individuals’ fear and the historical report of the pandemic.
After the deep and sacred intimancy of quarantine has had time to brew and settle, here I start from the end of the lockdown till the slow attempt to find our community, evolving into the post-COVID-19 landscape, among obligations and restrictions in social distancing which rule our social relations since the start of phase 2.
This pandemic outbreak really made evident how unprepared many individuals were in their own search for truth, poetry and beauty in their everyday lives. We have rediscovered ourselves as a species, and started to consider ourselves part of something bigger.
Now it’s time for all of us to reassemble the ruins. It’s finally time to start deconstructing the cromatic texture of reality, since images will never be able to fully represent it; start choosing what to save and what (or who) will save us.
Everything will start again from darkness and, at dawn, be born again.
My pictures are just light representations of a specific arrangement of four words that softly whisper, “from bewilderment to hope”.
Their value stems from the conscience of their own grammar. These pictures are dedicated to the biggest losers of all times – the dreamers who changed the world for the better.
Now, there’s nothing left to do but to act: open your eyes and look closely, for we need it now the most.
Carlo Traini
