Praise of the Shadow is a journey into the phantasmal world of the Etruscans: a winding path through ruins, tombs and nature, in places where the human imprint emerges strongly in the vastness of time. The insoluble spiral between nature and civilisation.
Sky/earth Above/below, death/life, real world/imaginary world, I chose duality as the interpretative key to the project, a duality that converges and is summed up in a game of Shadow/Light.
Passion and study led me to the Etruscan sites and wandering among the archaeological remains I felt a strong imaginative impulse. Those apparently silent remains communicated to me through the surrounding space a strange energy that gave me the impulse to shoot. I travelled many kilometres in this way, but the way forward emerged when, using an old technique, I started to print the photos. As the images appeared on the paper, the value of the shadow jumped out at me; almost like a space/time door, the shadow allows the imagination to enter into the mystery.
The relationship that is created between light and shadow makes it possible to enter an almost parallel dimension that relates the two worlds and for a moment, the moment of the photo, unites and synthesises opposites. This is the key I have found to enhance the hidden beauty of Etruscan culture: shrouding it in shadow, emphasising its reliefs, highlighting the signs of what has emerged from the earth and hinting that much still remains hidden.
Just as we are still unaware of the influence of Etruscan culture on our civilisation, so photography does not seek to declare but to suggest that the ancient Etruscan remains still have much to reveal to us, if we are not frightened by the shadows.
“That's the only thing I'd really like to hold in my hand, the sound of the shadow.”
(Alda Merini)
