Laureline and Gianni are in love, one is in Italy, the other is in Portugal. 2515 kilometers separate Rome from Lisbon overland. And yet, as passionate as they are, they live the same life. The result is the use of “we” to recount with Gianni’s pen the days lived photographed by Laureline.
At the end of January she landed in Italy, he in Portugal. The epidemic then seemed a distant mirage, outside of Rome and their student carefree attitude. Then, over the course of a weekend, the city was cordoned off. Laureline got stuck in her apartment, her only freedom of movement to go to work. An unknown situation, they spent long hours on the phone to find their true home. Photography was then, for her, the means of recovering this stolen freedom, by snatching instants from life crumbling under her lens. Writing is, for him, a privileged means of expression.
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Two weeks of confinement, in an increasingly summary relationship with the outside. Some took the last flight to return to France or elsewhere, we did not. Two weeks that we are among the lucky teleworkers in decent apartments. Two weeks that our only possible route is delimited by 4 walls. It would be dishonest to complain or rejoice in such a situation, we who are not “at the front”. We can only see. And what we see is that, in this infinite sequence of days that are no longer distinguishable, the night is a liberation. Once our work day is over, the night becomes our refuge. Our only possibility to make this day stand out from the next, to create other images, other narratives, other horizons. This is why all the photos were taken between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m., on the inspiration of half-conscious sleepwalkers.
We are impatiently waiting for the gradient of the sky to lick the roofs of the buildings of Rome and Lisbon. It is the full soul that we let our wildest thoughts flow in this restful night. This new project is to follow this night that has become necessary. A night when we just want to ignore the shape of time and forget the martial rhythm of the day; to reject a little the infinite monotony which disturbs the reference marks and to move away from the perpetual restarting. We wanted all this mixture to resemble a dream, absurd and multicolored, so that the nocturnal escape becomes our source of Light. And letting ourselves be guided by his Illusion, we have sometimes found something to feel the fullness.
6:30 p.m. – Distortion of the sunset
It’s the night that comes with a heavy, inevitable and encompassing step. She is coming, you can hear her coming from her unparalleled rustle. Ola who’s going there? Finally here it is with its procession of whistlers, showers, talkers and hucksters.
Preference for midnight blue rather than orange pink. In the sunset what matters is after. It’s the promised end of natural light, sometimes the identity of the urban and rural landscape. In a sunset it’s the midnight blue that takes away the orange-pink, always.
So our nights are of thorns and roses. This arbitrary destiny which leads to worship the night as the only god, intoxicated to be more than one. Dreamlike, the flight of reality into the partiality of the night which reassures us. There are only a few small bright spots through the curtain. We just have to dive into the arms of this liberating night to count one day less and more dreams.
It’s the night that comes with a heavy, inevitable and encompassing step. She is coming, you can hear her coming from her unparalleled rustle. Ola who’s going there? Finally here it is with its procession of whistlers, showers, talkers and hucksters.
Preference for midnight blue rather than orange pink. In the sunset what matters is after. It’s the promised end of natural light, sometimes the identity of the urban and rural landscape. In a sunset it’s the midnight blue that takes away the orange-pink, always.
So our nights are of thorns and roses. This arbitrary destiny which leads to worship the night as the only god, intoxicated to be more than one. Dreamlike, the flight of reality into the partiality of the night which reassures us. There are only a few small bright spots through the curtain. We just have to dive into the arms of this liberating night to count one day less and more dreams.
But wait. What does she do with those who put themselves at risk? This labor force sacred for the time of a “war”. It is the expected night, the miraculous night, the magnanimous night, the night of mercy for all those in the home, for the confined, but what is it this night for those in action? The rest of the warrior ? The possibility of an island ? The certainty that everything will start again tomorrow? Well caught between fear and duty. Some have the leisure to dream their impossible dreams, the others are satisfied with rest. We don’t live by working in fear, we don’t live by working, we live after. Conscripts have the task of resting to be fit the next day. We are the passives of this disease, an iron curtain separates us.
10:48 p.m. – Calm awakening
Robert, Robert the devil, Robert Desnos, Bob, Bobby
Compiègne and Czechoslovakia
Aragon and Breton.
Inspirator of a world to (re) (uncover).
And if the mermaid is well washed by her soaps, what about Tristan’s menagerie? Surely sad.
It’s all about feeling, no matter how.
Knowing you despise them
Like the self-taught automaton
Cadence is born of what you are.
To hell with it, Robert, belief in the real
Let’s stay in our overflow, full of Love, full of Illusion.
And there, right here, maybe there will be the end of hammered alienation.
1h12 a.m. – paradoxical sleep
We dream that we are going out. But this semblance of freedom is a farce, already more of a tragedy, because even in our dreams, everything is barricaded.
A courteous saxophonist asked me:
“Where can I buy the necessities?” ”
“It all depends on what you consider necessary”
“Let’s say light and a little bread”
“So this is it”
I point out a distant point to him.
The courteous saxophonist returns smiling:
“I think everything is complete”
4:30 a.m. – paradoxical awakening
Dream, daydream, dreamers
Rage, red, renegades
A flower enclosed in a mouth
Whose is this flower?
Whose mouth is this?
She wants to hatch, it’s obvious
Yes the mouth wants to hatch
But it’s impossible, not now, not immediately, not already.
So everything is closed.
There is a breath coming from the North East
It fills the space
He is alone and unique
All eyes support him
Ah yes now there are several of us, maybe even more.
A coin falls softly on the ground,
Barely clicking
Barely coin change
Barely awakened
Râ half-opens the door.
6:01 am – Dawn
The dream dissipates, reality takes over.
The invisible ones of yesterday, the invisible ones of tomorrow, in the pinnacle today. All are articulated in good feeling, beware it will overflow, it drips, it’s almost charming. But would it soon be the end of your merit? Is this dawn the start of your twilight? The light was good for you, but the gluttons, monopolize the halos, leaving you only with blood, toil, tears and sweat. In all wars, infantrymen became names on walls, generals of book titles. By this single aspect, perhaps, “we are at war”. You did not swear on this background of heroism, on the contrary.
You shone in the night like a divine finger shows the road,
while the speeches swallowed up your merit to hide their rout.
You return to the shadows, without further ado, in the ranks of the “inconsistent”.
But by the time of the big court, when the cherry blossoms bloom, you will know which side you are on.
BIOGRAPHY :
Laureline Bobin is 23 years old, she studies international cooperation at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Fascinated by the Japanese world she spent one year in Tokyo where she discovered photography, she settled in Rome for her final year internship
Gianni De Georgi is 22 years old He is studying criminal law, at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
