" Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Inwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”.
William Butler Yeats
WORK IN PROGRESS
A portrait is always a place. We are places, made of all the other people we met; all the other places we walked through; all the other memories we collected.
Any face is primarily one's identity. Our eyes are the connection, our lines and wrinkles are the streets, the rivers, the canals which trace the persistence of our souls in other's memories. We are defined by our own face to the World, like a city is defined by its own stilts, palaces and water canals. It would not exist aside from its surfaces.
"Places" (or "Animae", title not yet defined) is a series of portraits in video, I am still working on. http://www.itsliquid.com/interview-alberto-messaggi.html
It will come out with seven portraits. Seven people. Seven souls… The choice of video medium is because it blurs time based cinematography with the frozen moment of still photography. The video layering nature, with the startling clarity and precision of HD, infuses portraits with references found in painting, sculpture, photography and film. The final result on the HD monitor resembles a photograph, but on closer inspection reveals a wider breathing and lively presence which the moving image only can afford.
