In the same places where the Venice Film Festival comes to life at the end of the summer, a group of teenage skaters and bikers gathers everyday after school.
They arrive one at a time, never all together: there’s the one who places the workout before anything else, who doesn’t seek the group but loves to have a public, and for these reasons is always the first to arrive; there’s the one who simply wants to leave home, to escape from a routine of parents and homeworks, and surrender to the call of the herd; and finally the one who (uninterested) arrives, then goes away, and then maybe comes back again.
It’s a strange bunch of teenagers of different ages, different bodies, different interests.
An unruly and anarchist group that finds, with a simplicity that is almost miraculous, his personal and enviable harmony.
A harmony that belongs to another world, which indeed is out of the world, like an orchestra where all the instruments play what they want without following the scores.
They jump, joke, eat, smoke.
They don’t speak too much. They prefer to move.
Looking at them, comes to mind the famous quote of an american philosopher, who said that “the time spent in the wrong way during youth is perhaps the only true freedom that each of us has ever had.”
More than their sports performances, Young Skin tries to observe closely the dynamics of the group and relationships arising within it, staying far away or going close, looking into the eyes or stealing moments.
Mostly observing silently, trying to listen and understand a language that only the subjects of the photos speak.
The language of words and bodies.
The smell of a place and a moment of life.
About the author:
Lorenzo Tardella (24 years old) lives and studies in Rome. Big movie buff, has written and directed short films and music videos. Young Skin is his first photographic project.
