5-Hollow

The last image of the series is this one, depicting my alter-ego, Sosia, overexposed, in a fetal position on a black environment. Taking inspiration from the gypsum human casts of Pompeii, from the human shadow on the stone of the Sumitono bank stairs, formed seconds after the explosion of Hiroshima nuclear bomb (concept of Human Vaporization), I tried to portray my own death, following Hippolyte Bayard's "self portrait as a drowned man". Photography has been and is today a good way to exorcise our own death, thanks to its nature of indicator, proof, stamp of the reality. I tried to portray myself dead, without success: I was keeping on seeing an actor, the usual stranger with my appearance, feeling myself as the spectator of a good fiction. The fetal position has been the key to solve this problem: ancestral symbol of life, of what is before the birth, is also an instinctive position of self-defense, assumed when one is willing to protect himself from danger. It is also a way of positioning the death body in some ancient cultures. Life, death and protection are the elements I conveyed in this position, making my body a white stamp, inverted version of the one from Hiroshima, overexposed, lacking of my body texture and characteristics, floating on a chaotic black fluid.