REBUS

"Rebus" is a new series of photographs showing portions of reality, not manipulated in any way, which contain within them an oxymoric, disturbing or totally incongruous detail from the whole. Photographs that present a situation that, for some reason, asks the observer to decipher and analyze.
In practice, the photo proposes a question because it is not made of what it shows, but from what it insinuates, suggests or hides completely, and the picture works or better transmits its feeling indirectly.

 

The feature of this series is that, unlike the previous ones, there is no literary or emotional path that can lead to a location, as in the series "Sacks" or "Jorge Luis Borges". It is not a matter of recognizing the framing in reality that transmits the feeling of something previously expressed and assimilated by a story or a poem, and there is not even the faint trace of a single word, as it was for "Confidence".

 

The photographs of "Rebus" are totally self-produced by reality, as well as the feelings they express. There is no path to follow to find them because no location makes their appearance more likely. Consequently, contrary to the previous series, a total absence of intentions is necessary because there is no thesis to substantiate, no sentiment to be transmitted except that generated by the images themselves. In this case the photographer must simply be a "hypersensitive animal" who tries to feed himself with something he does not yet know the shape of.

 

It is, I believe, the sublimation of my concept of photography, which in order to be art must emerge from itself, from history, from caption, from fiction and from the presumption of representing a reality that, in itself, does not mean anything.

 

Michele Alassio