The project Idiot Wind is aimed to mock these photographers who, after putting aside a nice little nest-egg, decide to leave for some poor country to take thousands of pictures of black faces, prematurely wrinkled skind, or, in the best of cases, to try to immortalize the innocent heppiness of a child spashing about in a latrine of a slum in Bombay.
The project Idiot Wind is aimed to tell true stories and to represent reality without invading it, and without producing those “sadistic and third-worldist reportages” that deprive the document of its informative, didactic and ethic value. When a reportage does not inform, when it does not bring to light any unknown political or social issue, but it insists on the same suffering that conventional media like to show, it risks to reveal itself as mere “aesthetics of suffering” both for the photographer and for the public. These kind of pics involves the visceral pleasure of looking at a reportage photo that documents some dramatic event, and considering it as pure art. It means to ignore the main value of that piece of work: its being a Document, which is the only scapegoat that should make a photographer proud of what he has realized, and the spectator proud of what he is observing.
Therefore, I felt the need to write ironic, sometimes grotesquely cruel stories, which accompany the pictures and contribute to represent the accidental and surreal drama of everyday’s life.
The project Idiot Wind is aimed to tell true stories and to represent reality without invading it, and without producing those “sadistic and third-worldist reportages” that deprive the document of its informative, didactic and ethic value. When a reportage does not inform, when it does not bring to light any unknown political or social issue, but it insists on the same suffering that conventional media like to show, it risks to reveal itself as mere “aesthetics of suffering” both for the photographer and for the public. These kind of pics involves the visceral pleasure of looking at a reportage photo that documents some dramatic event, and considering it as pure art. It means to ignore the main value of that piece of work: its being a Document, which is the only scapegoat that should make a photographer proud of what he has realized, and the spectator proud of what he is observing.
Therefore, I felt the need to write ironic, sometimes grotesquely cruel stories, which accompany the pictures and contribute to represent the accidental and surreal drama of everyday’s life.
METROSHAMPOO
Every town is made up of small rural communities coexisting peacefully. Fortified walls enclose each community, and create spaces in which aesthetics doesn’t count and nothing is forbidden for the sake of appearance. Within the walls, one can feel free to shuffle around in his comfortable slippers, walking with a straight back while carelessly removing a thread of tobacco from his lips, and nodding at his neighbor’s usual attempts to persuade him to change over from hand-rolled cigarettes to ready-made ones.
Every day, people prepare for their journey to work, which leads them to cross the lands of other communities: the dignity that they show when facing local inhabitants, a dignity that they feel duty bound to display in order to preserve the reputation of their own community, becomes their way to deal with strangers. Comparison develops into an endless competition with no winners and no losers, since the quantity and the variety of the people that one can meet may lead one to disregard his own personality and his sense of belonging to a particular community, and to lose himself in an infinite game of comparisons and differentiations.
This atmosphere floats in the air –and yet it is denied- every morning, but in a courtyard a mother cleans her child with loving care before letting him go out.
Every town is made up of small rural communities coexisting peacefully. Fortified walls enclose each community, and create spaces in which aesthetics doesn’t count and nothing is forbidden for the sake of appearance. Within the walls, one can feel free to shuffle around in his comfortable slippers, walking with a straight back while carelessly removing a thread of tobacco from his lips, and nodding at his neighbor’s usual attempts to persuade him to change over from hand-rolled cigarettes to ready-made ones.
Every day, people prepare for their journey to work, which leads them to cross the lands of other communities: the dignity that they show when facing local inhabitants, a dignity that they feel duty bound to display in order to preserve the reputation of their own community, becomes their way to deal with strangers. Comparison develops into an endless competition with no winners and no losers, since the quantity and the variety of the people that one can meet may lead one to disregard his own personality and his sense of belonging to a particular community, and to lose himself in an infinite game of comparisons and differentiations.
This atmosphere floats in the air –and yet it is denied- every morning, but in a courtyard a mother cleans her child with loving care before letting him go out.
A RED OCTOPUS Part1
Super Bock Surf Fest, Sagres-Portugal (2009)
3 hours ago a guy told you that the next day you would meet at four, here were you are sleeping now. But your friends told you that they could not return there for the appointment: “an appointment with who?”, they asked. “Then let’s close our eyes and sleep here”. “Are you kidding us? We are not staying here, and you have drunk up all the fantasy with that guy”.
So wait and bear: stand an Italian guy who takes you pictures without flash for not to wake you up, fight the temptation to laugh while you are being taken pictures, bear the cold all the night while you are still awake because of that fantasy.
A red octopus, the boy will not come to the appointment, but go have a red octopus tattooed…
Super Bock Surf Fest, Sagres-Portugal (2009)
3 hours ago a guy told you that the next day you would meet at four, here were you are sleeping now. But your friends told you that they could not return there for the appointment: “an appointment with who?”, they asked. “Then let’s close our eyes and sleep here”. “Are you kidding us? We are not staying here, and you have drunk up all the fantasy with that guy”.
So wait and bear: stand an Italian guy who takes you pictures without flash for not to wake you up, fight the temptation to laugh while you are being taken pictures, bear the cold all the night while you are still awake because of that fantasy.
A red octopus, the boy will not come to the appointment, but go have a red octopus tattooed…
A RED OCTOPUS Part2
The guy with the red octopus: “I sew it on my wrist not to desire you,
While the other remains skins and waits four you”.
The guy with the red octopus: “I sew it on my wrist not to desire you,
While the other remains skins and waits four you”.
SMARTPHONE
“You are not going home just for a bit of dermatitis, are you?”
“I feel itchy all over the face, my forehead and cheekbones look horrible”
“Then I will find you some work that you can do in your office, where nobody sees you, ok? But you are not going home. Please.”
The boss, writing the e-mail that will allow him to have the app of his company on his Smartphone:
“You should scream, run and believe in God, but you don’t… that’s why you have this crap on your face”.
“I should be desperate to do all this.”
“You are desperate.”
“So it’s ok for you to have a desperate man at work?”
“You are a smart desperate man… Someone desperate is someone faithful.”
The employee gets up and stands behind his chair:
“Every evening I rest on the green stool on which my father used to practice the snare drum. So I begin to think about all that has happened until the moment when I sat down, and suddenly my soul begins to go back in time until it sees something in my past that makes it smile, and every time it laughs, the elastic band that connects us makes it come closer to me, and the further it goes in the past, the more slowly it returns to me, as if the elastic forces made their own rules, and every day I feel my soul more distant. However, when it arrives, even if the force that brings it to me is feeble, I open my eyes wide and for a moment I see the face of God, and looks somehow like me.
“You are not going home just for a bit of dermatitis, are you?”
“I feel itchy all over the face, my forehead and cheekbones look horrible”
“Then I will find you some work that you can do in your office, where nobody sees you, ok? But you are not going home. Please.”
The boss, writing the e-mail that will allow him to have the app of his company on his Smartphone:
“You should scream, run and believe in God, but you don’t… that’s why you have this crap on your face”.
“I should be desperate to do all this.”
“You are desperate.”
“So it’s ok for you to have a desperate man at work?”
“You are a smart desperate man… Someone desperate is someone faithful.”
The employee gets up and stands behind his chair:
“Every evening I rest on the green stool on which my father used to practice the snare drum. So I begin to think about all that has happened until the moment when I sat down, and suddenly my soul begins to go back in time until it sees something in my past that makes it smile, and every time it laughs, the elastic band that connects us makes it come closer to me, and the further it goes in the past, the more slowly it returns to me, as if the elastic forces made their own rules, and every day I feel my soul more distant. However, when it arrives, even if the force that brings it to me is feeble, I open my eyes wide and for a moment I see the face of God, and looks somehow like me.
CRUMBS Part1
Vercelli, Italy (1988)
This child discovered the mirror last month, and for one month he has been trying to remove his
skin blemishes by spreading on his face the soups prepared by his mother.
In this picture, he's trying to modify his appearance with crumbs of biscuits.
Vercelli, Italy (1988)
This child discovered the mirror last month, and for one month he has been trying to remove his
skin blemishes by spreading on his face the soups prepared by his mother.
In this picture, he's trying to modify his appearance with crumbs of biscuits.
CRUMBS Part2
Gabiano Monferrato, Italy (2003)
This child does not know any reflecting surface, and he shamelessly shows the wrinkled expression assumed by his face after 3 months spent imitating the faces of his grandparents.
Gabiano Monferrato, Italy (2003)
This child does not know any reflecting surface, and he shamelessly shows the wrinkled expression assumed by his face after 3 months spent imitating the faces of his grandparents.
CRUMBS Part3
Los Canos de meca, Spain (2009)
The child who used to spread his mom’s soups on his face to improve his appearance, 20 years later moves to Los Canos de Meca because he cannot live without making-up with the local muds.
Los Canos de meca, Spain (2009)
The child who used to spread his mom’s soups on his face to improve his appearance, 20 years later moves to Los Canos de Meca because he cannot live without making-up with the local muds.
HEARTS Part1
Bologna, Italy (2007)
This person has been photographed for other reasons.
Actually, he is an outstanding researcher, who moves tourists to pity with the purpose to study the heartbeat of the donors throwing him a coin, with a heart rate monitor hidden in the can on the left.
In his last article for Bild Der Wissenschaft, he claims that the “Rhythm of pity” corresponds to the rhythm of the socio-cultural growth of a country.
Bologna, Italy (2007)
This person has been photographed for other reasons.
Actually, he is an outstanding researcher, who moves tourists to pity with the purpose to study the heartbeat of the donors throwing him a coin, with a heart rate monitor hidden in the can on the left.
In his last article for Bild Der Wissenschaft, he claims that the “Rhythm of pity” corresponds to the rhythm of the socio-cultural growth of a country.
HEARTS Part2
The researcher, a big fan of Tricky, in his last article confesses that for the heart rate monitor he was inspired by his great idol.
During one of his concerts, the researcher affirms, Tricky started to reproduce the heartbeat by beating his chest with the microphone.
The researcher, a big fan of Tricky, in his last article confesses that for the heart rate monitor he was inspired by his great idol.
During one of his concerts, the researcher affirms, Tricky started to reproduce the heartbeat by beating his chest with the microphone.
DO-Q Part1
A father and his daughter meet by accident after 20 years spent resenting each other, but they both proudly look away.
In the evening, the father phones his daughter to tell her “I love you. I am your father and I love you”, then he lets the receiver fall to the floor. At the other side of the line there is his ten-year-old granddaughter, whom he has never met. 16 years later, she will make a documentary film on her grandfather’s life, using an unknown actor from Turin. Before his taking part in “Do-Q” (a TV broadcast about emergent documentarists), she will ask the actor to affirm that he is her real grandfather, in order to preserve the credibility of the movie…
A father and his daughter meet by accident after 20 years spent resenting each other, but they both proudly look away.
In the evening, the father phones his daughter to tell her “I love you. I am your father and I love you”, then he lets the receiver fall to the floor. At the other side of the line there is his ten-year-old granddaughter, whom he has never met. 16 years later, she will make a documentary film on her grandfather’s life, using an unknown actor from Turin. Before his taking part in “Do-Q” (a TV broadcast about emergent documentarists), she will ask the actor to affirm that he is her real grandfather, in order to preserve the credibility of the movie…
DO_Q Part2
Turin, Italy (2011)
This is the actor from Turin (but born in Sicily) at the funeral of his real daughter, two months after the shooting of the documentary, during which, after 16 years of reflection, he decided to consent to euthanasia. He will never forgive himself; but while looking at an old picture of his daughter, he had asked “where are you, where?”.
At the funeral, the brave, tiny actor from Turin wears the suit that he received as payment for the shooting of the scene staging his daughter’s marriage.
Turin, Italy (2011)
This is the actor from Turin (but born in Sicily) at the funeral of his real daughter, two months after the shooting of the documentary, during which, after 16 years of reflection, he decided to consent to euthanasia. He will never forgive himself; but while looking at an old picture of his daughter, he had asked “where are you, where?”.
At the funeral, the brave, tiny actor from Turin wears the suit that he received as payment for the shooting of the scene staging his daughter’s marriage.
August (1996)
In August it is always hot. One always needs to do those dirty things and to sleep with the sheets rolled between his legs, creating a stain of sweat at his side.
In August, one would like to rely on a girl’s love to find the strength to find a new job, instead of being left by the same girl because he does not have enough strength to do it.
In August, I am in my thirty-year-old boy bedroom, with the shutters well closed, waiting for the night to come, to fall asleep with an easy conscience.
Parenthesis about depression (depression pinches one’s best ideas, and becomes a very respectable person… Considering her disposition, she could be the right girl to introduce to one’s parents, with the hope that, after a few years of cohabitation, it could be possible to split up amicably, to call each other occasionally and to walk away with lowered head in case of accidental meeting).
In August it is always hot. One always needs to do those dirty things and to sleep with the sheets rolled between his legs, creating a stain of sweat at his side.
In August, one would like to rely on a girl’s love to find the strength to find a new job, instead of being left by the same girl because he does not have enough strength to do it.
In August, I am in my thirty-year-old boy bedroom, with the shutters well closed, waiting for the night to come, to fall asleep with an easy conscience.
Parenthesis about depression (depression pinches one’s best ideas, and becomes a very respectable person… Considering her disposition, she could be the right girl to introduce to one’s parents, with the hope that, after a few years of cohabitation, it could be possible to split up amicably, to call each other occasionally and to walk away with lowered head in case of accidental meeting).
HUNCHBACK
Why do I look at you only when it rains? I go out only when I am sure to get wet, and the other days I stay at home to make pins with whom to seal soups in bags.
You have a hunchback now. At the moment I do not have any pic of you with a straight back, and you used to tell me “you look like a toad”, but I could not do without that position.
You used to tell me “you look like a toad”, then you thought of your husband, you looked at us in the mirror, and you made me get off your back.
If you had let me take you a picture, now I would not need to hope to have you behind me with your umbrella. And was it a big deal for you to learn how to use a computer, for you who were a clerck? Of course, it was for me… and all your talking 'bout “grab the camera with all the memory cards” “I cannot put them into the computer, and then my husband finds them" “throw them away” "but I still love him…"
But… after these sentences you would bear also the toad position.
Why do I look at you only when it rains? I go out only when I am sure to get wet, and the other days I stay at home to make pins with whom to seal soups in bags.
You have a hunchback now. At the moment I do not have any pic of you with a straight back, and you used to tell me “you look like a toad”, but I could not do without that position.
You used to tell me “you look like a toad”, then you thought of your husband, you looked at us in the mirror, and you made me get off your back.
If you had let me take you a picture, now I would not need to hope to have you behind me with your umbrella. And was it a big deal for you to learn how to use a computer, for you who were a clerck? Of course, it was for me… and all your talking 'bout “grab the camera with all the memory cards” “I cannot put them into the computer, and then my husband finds them" “throw them away” "but I still love him…"
But… after these sentences you would bear also the toad position.
