Gaia Squarci has chosen to explore a subject that corresponds to the essence of photography: light and the shapes that it makes, ubiquitous to the point that it makes our interactions with the world a primarily visual experience. By documenting the lives of the visually impaired, most as a result of an accident, Gaia Squarci communicates emotions, giving them a materiality. In her highly rigorous compositions, she destigmatizes the disability and offers in its place a tale of everyday life.
What matters to Squarci isn’t difference so much as similarities, those that allow us to understand the relationships between men and women, parents and children, and other social interactions. The visually impaired show by touching, express themselves by pressing, caressing fingers and lips, feeling the warmth of light and faces. Like photographers, they make visible the imperceptible vibrations that transform the ordinary. There’s no pathos, then, only a tender energy, an altruistic form of poetry that reveals itself through shadow and contrast.
Read the full article on the French version of Le Journal.
Laurence Cornet
