Hot Zone

PHOTOGRAPHY

Apr 2

The area where dreams are generated in our brain is called the ‘hot zone’. When photographer Claudia Fuggetti suffered from insomnia, she became obsessed with the idea of recreating what she saw in her dreams, trying to capture images which are usually lost after you wake up. Her images are transporting us back into her lucid dreams, mixing vision, dreams and reality.

Photography Claudia Fuggetti

The discovery of the brain area where dreams are generated is relatively recent; it is located precisely above the nape and is called the “hot zone”. Hot Zone documents the unfolding of a lucid dream, placing the viewer in the balance between fiction and reality, in which photography becomes proof of its existence.

I started this new work at a complicated time in my life, at the end of 2019, I was suffering from insomnia, and I was very anxious about the future, the fate of human beings and the environment, seriously compromised. Dreams began to merge with reality, becoming images. From that moment, my obsession was to reproduce what I saw during my sleeping hours, noting details and trying to recreate them visually.

The images on a subconscious layer are transformed into a visual journey in which visions, flashbacks and hallucinations connect, giving rise to new space-time dimensions and psychedelic worlds. The relationship between landscape and nature is complex: real places have been altered through digital painting interventions. They seem to come from alien planets, taking on unusual colours and becoming a mirror of human tension towards the future of the Earth.

Beauty hides restlessness:
“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.”

Lord Byron

Hot Zone becomes an actual dimension, bringing to life what is usually destined to be lost after each awakening. The contribution of artificial intelligence can help overcome the human limit of memory. Within the project are images (square format) of documentation produced by a neural network I created.

“The images on a subconscious layer are transformed into a visual journey in which visions, flashbacks and hallucinations connect, giving rise to new space-time dimensions and psychedelic worlds.”

Hot Zone is available as a Zine from Village books

Design by Sam Hutchinson
19 x 27.5 cm
Softcover, double zine with fold-out poster, vacuum sealed
1st Edition, 50 copies
April 2022
English

About Claudia

Born in Taranto in 1993, after graduating in Cultural Heritage, she attended the Master's degree in Photography and Visual Design at NABA, Milan. Subsequently, she graduated with honours in Digital Cultures at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.

Her works have been exhibited at Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles (FR), Fotofestival Lenzburg (CH), Copenhagen Photo Festival (DK), Rotterdam Photo Festival (NL), PhMuseum Days (IT), Geste Paris (FR), Giovane Fotografia Italiana (IT) and MIA Fair (IT). She is also one of the 150 emerging talents in Europe for Fresh Eyes by GUP Magazine and British Journal of Photography's Edition 365 winner.

To see more of her work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram

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Hot Zone

Beauty hides restlessness: “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.”

“The images on a subconscious layer are transformed into a visual journey in which visions, flashbacks and hallucinations connect, giving rise to new space-time dimensions and psychedelic worlds.”

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