Apri gli occhi

“At the beginning her eyes can’t see, the eyes of the girl photographed by Matteo Nanni. They can’t see because of a white bandage that prevents them to inspect and elaborate what is in front of them. Then, sequence after sequence, those bandages fall down, are removed, and we are spectators of the liberation of the eyes, one after another. Finally the world reveals itself again, with its colours – that the shimmering lipstick on the lips and on the naked body reminds us to be still there, vital. Literature and cinema proposed us many examples of the dramatic moment of intense emotion in which, maybe after a surgery, bandages are removed and the light throws out the darkness, revealing the world’s features; or, in a memorable romance by Jules Verne, Michael Strogoff, we all remember the final coup de théâtre, when Strogoff, messenger of the Czar, caught by the Tartars, is not blinded by the red hot saber that is passed on his eyes, because he is profusely crying staring at his poor mother. Beyond the unconscious that Nanni’s photographs – shot with extremely high precision and convulsive attention to the progression of sequences: maybe if we let them flow quickly, they would make a piece of a movie - moves in each of us, these images become a metaphor for how fundamental it is to “see”- and we all know how different it is to look and to see, a conscious action, that gives sense to life and is able to take the time to observe in depth and to elaborate the memories inside us. These images remind us of how sad and impoverishing is the use of “passing nearby” without seeing, almost as if a bandage covers our eyes. Maybe Matteo Nanni intends to invite us to reflect on an elementary truth declared by Baltasar Gracián y Morales, the Spanish Jesuit of the seventeenth century: “Not all those who see have opened their eyes, and not all those who look can see”.

Sandro Parmiggiani