I asked myself countless times what sense of belonging is. I wonder how we can belong to something or something can belong to us. I don’t mean owning something or holding it in my hands, more like feeling something or recognizing it. Doing so without realizing it. The acquired gaze of belonging to shape, light, sound.
And this is what often makes me feel something familiar, for a moment. It can happen by being on a piece of land where I moved my first steps or by staring at the surface of the moon. We are always looking for something known in everything, be it in front of our eyes or in an external imagination. And we often find it without knowing. We don’t recognize it, but we can feel it. The photographic image feeds from this. Photography is always the consequence of feeling a sense of belonging, something we long for, even in the most distant exotic.
From this unknown contact we often create the fossil of an image. Sometimes registered in the storage of our memory, sometimes in a photograph. A fossil of what I could now start defining as what we call Mother Land. Not something we walk on, but something with build fossil above fossil. The journey becomes a keystone in the construction of this cathedral where we get lost and return to. Being in an unfamiliar place becomes necessary for building a familiar land, recovering with our eyes those hidden fragments of who we are.
This is the starting point for Andrea Alfano’s images. The shape of ancient rocks, their surface and their weight are what resounds and echoes in his gaze. And this is the map we find across his entire work: from the natural shapes of dry-stone walls and cobblestone to the human skin and the animals’ leather. A materiality that is both foreground and background, but never loses its role as a protagonist.
The stone that built the landscape and the town of Neoneli, now represents something different for us and for the author – fossils to which sooner or later we’ll feel a sense of belonging to. [ Luca Spano ]
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ARSUNELI'S LANDS
by Andrea Alfano
Streets of the Historic Centre - Neoneli OR (Italy)
10 August – 4 September 2016
admission fee: free entry
_ _ _
[ INTERNAL RESOURCES ]
◉ [ FPtag ] MENOTRENTUNO2016: the editorial staff's point of view
◉ [ video ] Menotrentuno: terramadre / homeland
◉ [ events ] Menotrentuno: an Island of exhibitions
◉ [ exhibitions ] Okoem, space that can look around by Yevgeny Nakonechnyy
◉ [ contest ] #meno31contest
◉ [ YToI2015 ] Crossover Category | Best Author 2015: Andrea Alfano
[ EXTERNAL RESOURCES ]
◎ Andrea Alfano
◎ Menotrentuno
published on 2016-08-10 in NEWS / EXHIBITIONS
MENOTRENTUNO2016FPmag
editor in chief Sandro Iovine | sandro.iovine@fpmagazine.eu - senior writer Stefania Biamonti - web developer Salvatore Picciuto | info@myphotoportal.com - linguistic coordination Nicky Alexander - translations Nicky Alexander, Rachele Frosini - contributor Davide Bologna, Mimmo Cacciuni Angelone, Laura Marcolini, Stefano Panzeri, Pio Tarantini, Salvo Veneziano - local Lazio correspondent Dario Coletti local Sardinian correspondent Salvatore Ligios - local Sicilian correspondent Salvo Veneziano - editorial office via Spartaco, 36 20135 Milano MI | redazione@fpmagazine.eu - phone +39 02 49537170 - copyright © 2015 FPmag - FPmag is a pubblication of Machia Press Publishing srl a socio unico, via Cristoforo Gluck, 3 20135 Milano MI - VAT no. 07535000967 C.F. (TAX code) 07535000967 - Copyright © 2015 FPmag - Registered at Tribunale di Milano No. 281 on the 9th September 2014
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