White Walls

This project focuses on the concept of “vacancy” as an increasingly rare subject to find in our chaotic contemporary cities. Something that still has the power to make us feel uncomfortable, with the urge to fill it with the “signs” of our passage. Indeed our minds are no longer accustomed to the absence of messages. And even the vacuum itself yearns to be filled in by attracting everything in its range with some sort of magnetic energy.

Here in Berlin I feel this kind of vacuum each time I find myself in one of its many “non-places”. Forgotten empty spaces overcome by dull blind buildings, whose white walls resemble giant sheets waiting to be filled in, to become part of the “whole”. Those surfaces seem to glow in the bright sunlight like enchanting alien monoliths, making us loose the sense of meanings.

For this project I decided to make use of the analog pinhole photography on large format film, a slow and thoughtful technique. I did this for a series of reasons, the most important ones being the need to take my time with those places and the desire to make the emulsion itself “breathe” the atmosphere through the direct contact with the outside air. Moreover, the inherent softness and the strong peripheral light fall, both typical of pinhole photography, contribute to enhancing the radiant light described above.