Besides fostering art and independent films not usually broadcasted by mainstream media, this program showed fragments of films, historical documentaries, interviews, short films and other forms of images, as if creating a historical/visual collective memory and posing innovative questions on how overcrowded by images our “information society” is. It was wonderful, watching the TV in the middle of the night, in the dark, drifting between nonsense and video art. A unique atmosphere.
With this feelings in mind, as a hymn to the night, Matteo Fiorelli started conceiving a night-themed series of photographs to tell his city, La Spezia, as it appears in the dark hours. Through places and encounters, he tries to show the city’s hidden face, to infuse it with that almost magical atmosphere so dear to him.
All is set in La Spezia, Italian town on the Tyrrhenian Sea, Liguria. Like in many other cities of this region, the scenery dramatically changes in the space of few kilometers, from the seaside to the mountains and forests right behind it.
From Cinque Terre to the green valleys of Val di Vara, nature is an important and recurrent element. As the series developed, the project focused more on the relationship between the urban element and the natural one, on how these interact with each other in a city that could be any city.
A perpetual, reciprocal interactions in which one overcomes other.
Here the statement project:
“Interactions” is a declaration of love to the night-cloaked city, when each of its parts appears under a new (dark) light. Places shift and show the subtle equilibrium between the restful calm and the unsettling fear we feel in the dead of the night. It is also a topographic research on city places that points at interactions of natural and artificial elements, the latter indicating a human presence sometimes fleeting, sometimes long-lasting. At night, the objects of urban routine mix with something unexpected, nature and man-made artifact become one in front of the camera. It is the same act of shooting that gives relevance and dignity to something we see everyday, the ordinary but unexpected subject, so that every observer can acknowledge its uniqueness. This sequence tries to show the city’s soul: shifting, unstable, maybe clearer in the dark. The places we usually inhabit have their own genius loci, sadly neglected in the usual hustle and noise that absorb all of our attention and interest. Objects and places are alive, and yet frozen by the flash in a single moment in which common things regain not just beauty, but something unreal, dreamlike. A journey into the dream of an asleep city, for us to share.
Was born in 1984, He lives and works in Italy as engineer and he’s passionate about photography since 2009. He has been published on APF Magazine and ARGO Poetry Yearbook. A little list of exhibitions and events includes festival/space like Photolux Festival, Spazio32 – Fondazione Carispezia,, SpazioLUM, Mitilanza#1, ACMÈ Festival. In 2018 has published his first self published book, “Interactions”.
