The photographic path ʺSLOW STREETʺ arises from the desire to approach ʺStreet Photographyʺ with a new criterion of investigation and creative method. This method of investigation wants to be precisely ʺSLOWʺ therefore more contemplative, meditative, I wait and for this reason the photographic technique used is the same that is generally associated with ʺLandscape Photographyʺ. in fact, in this photographic journey, of which ʺINDIFFERENCE ANATOMYʺ is part, the camera is always used on a tripod. The use of the tripod is, on the one hand, associated with the possibility of using slow shutter speeds but the main purpose is to be able to identify the shooting point in a preventive manner so that the photograph can be pre-viewed before taking it. This method allows you to develop every single photographic project starting from the visualization of every single shot up to the drafting of the project in its entirety before starting the shooting phase. The elaboration, writing and pre-visualization phase of the photographic project becomes fundamental even before shooting. As in the case of ʺINDIFFERENCE ANATOMYʺ, a theme to be explored is chosen and the shooting locations, settings, atmospheres, lights are chosen, up to a series of shots that can complete the photographic portfolio giving it a figure very clear and coherent stylistics. Conceiving ʺStreet Photographyʺ in this new mode allows photography not only to have a mere aesthetic value in itself but also to become part of a much more complex and articulated project that can be read as a story made up of all its individual shots that represent the individual chapters.
ʺINDIFFERENCE ANATOMYʺ was born as a portfolio that is part of the series of thematic projects of ʺSLOW STREETʺ to which I am dedicating myself in this phase of my intellectual and creative journey. In this photographic portfolio I wanted to go back to talking about one of the "derivatives" of this contemporary era, "indifference". Leaving behind the vision of indifference as a psychological disease, the photographic portfolio ʺINDIFFERENCE ANATOMYʺ deviates from the usual paths of investigation to go back to indifference. In particular, through an in-depth exploration of the world of "NOT-PLACES", as widely analyzed by Marc Auge, as in-natural amplifiers of that momentary non-feeling that is indifference. As Bauman teaches us «In liquid modernity time is neither cyclical nor linear, as it normally was in other societies of modern and premodern history, but instead ʺpuntillisticʺ, that is, fragmented into a multitude of separate particles, each reduced to a point» (Z. Bauman, Liquid modernity, 1999). We live in a perpetual and breathless present, in which everything is entrusted to the experience of the moment, and in which the loss of sense of time is accompanied by the emptying of the criteria of relevance that distinguish the essential from the superfluous, the lasting from the ephemeral. . The identity that, painstakingly built yesterday on a life plan, today can or must be disjointed and reassembled in new forms is affected in order to be able to continually readjust to a present that is always changing: condemned, in short, to the ʺtirannia of the instantʺ. We live in a perpetual and breathless present, in which everything is entrusted to the experience of the moment. In which the loss of meaning is accompanied by the emptying of those criteria that distinguish the essential from the superfluous, the lasting from the ephemeral, up to an unnatural indifference first towards one's own existential values and then towards the other. In this certain and unexpected outcome, Bauman himself cannot help but refer to both the work of Antonio Gramsci and that of Italo Calvino, two polar stars in his "wandering" in this increasingly disintegrating and disintegrating society. In fact, Bauman finds in Gramsci's philosophy the opening words for analyzing and describing liquid society through the same stance against indifference and fatalism. It is no coincidence that Gramsci's text "The future city" (1917) opens with the expression «I hate the indifferent», which represents the total overthrow of indifference, through deep feeling. A type of awareness that points to an awareness that becomes action. The target is the one who stands at the window. We think of a man and his propensity to perform a succession of mechanical acts. A life marked by the monotonous and stereotyped repetition of daily gestures, which do not "move" the soul in any direction. What speaks is indifference, the favorite target of social blame, a pathological state of mind commonly understood as an emotional detachment between oneself and others; a lack of interest in the world fueled by the desire not to be involved in any way, neither in love nor in struggle, neither in cooperation nor in competition. The idea of a person extraneous to world events and withdrawn into himself becomes a symbol of the loss of the sense of community and indifference that characterizes many serious social phenomena.
As can be seen from the images in this photographic portfolio, our society would be inhabited by distracted and careless passersby, affected by man's indifference towards man, endowed with an increasingly uncertain and precarious morality. «A multitude of intricate sleepwalkers in a sort of emotional coarctation and relational anesthesia» (A. Zamperini, Indifference. Conformism of feeling and emotional dissent, Einaudi, Turin, 2007). The modern prototypical figure of indifference is, in fact, the "passer-by": the one who in the face of the misfortune of others looks away and if he looks, does not see. All taken by himself and always in a hurry, he finds his opposite in the figure of the good Samaritan, the one who instead is attentive to others and ready to help. In these terms it would almost seem that the phenomenon of indifference finds its expression through forms of exogenous causality that place the individual in the background. But the indifferent, as such, cannot be considered completely extraneous to his condition. He does not remain in an external relationship with it. «Indifference, in fact, cannot be placed in the dimension of having, but in that of being. It is not said that a person "has indifference" but that he is indifferent"» (A. Zamperini, 2007). Leaving these parentheses means trying to understand the intimate and subjective meaning of indifference. A way of positioning oneself with respect to others but also towards oneself. In phenomenological language, to arrive at the description of how the individual feels his indifferent self and how he distances himself from it. As we can discover in Antoine Roquetin, the protagonist of the novel "The Nausea", to which Jean-Paul Sartre entrusts a vivid definition of the ʺIndifferenceʺ: «And now I know: I exist - the world exists - and I know that the world exists. That's all. But I don't care. It is strange that everything is equally indifferent to me: it is something that scares me. It started from that famous day when I wanted to play bouncing pebbles on the sea. I was about to throw that pebble, I looked at it, and that's when it started: I felt it existed. And after that, there were other Nauseas; from time to time objects come into existence inside the hand» (J. P. Sarte, 1938). We can say that the phenomenon of indifference well captures the breath of contemporaneity: "freediving". A holding your breath to better adapt to social reality. Passively assuming the mere feeling that the institution and the context propose and impose. It is for these reasons that Gramsci's thought itself, as analyzed by Bauman himself, can be defined as contemporary, because it surpasses his time and reaches us more alive than ever. It is aimed at everyone, urging them to be true citizens, to be responsible for their own lives, avoiding carelessness, indifference, indolence. The freedom of the individual is fundamental in this sense and Gramsci strongly encourages change, first of all as people. An out of control capitalism - he explains - becomes ʺa homeless vagabondʺ, making us slaves, while an excessive bureaucracy de-accuses us in the face of the shortcomings of the State, bowing to them; as if an inept and idle public life were the norm rather than the exception. His words are quite eloquent and of a disconcerting topicality. If the hope that is an illusion is to be avoided, one must be careful not to fall into cynicism, resignation, which are, too, at the service of the ʺstatus quoʺ. Love is one of the springs that pushes Gramsci towards politics: «loving a person means discovering the ability to love a community» (A. Gramsci, 1917). It is with a deep feeling of love that I propose this photographic portfolio to stimulate us to an increasingly participatory and less indifferent life.
