Those dreams that do not wake up
Dreams, fear, rage, screams and violence – Italian photographer Giacomo Infantino researched internal mutations and transformations following the lockdown. Through discussions and shared experiences he created essential performances, which have been fabricated in front of the camera.
Photography and Text Giacomo Infantino
"Those dreams that do not wake up” is a series of images which sprang from the will of researching some of the most sensitive and fleeting aspects of the inevitable and internal mutations and transformations caused or marked by the phase following the lockdown. Through a research of the psychological, iconic and aesthetic structure, the series examines the darkest and most hidden aspects of a heterogeneous group of people. After long discussions and dialogues on the shared experience during and after the lockdown, essential performances have been fabricated In front of the camera. This is opposed to the conflictual concept of immanence, as the images, subjugated to the inherent character of unpredictability of instantaneous photography with which they have been created, become the testimony of artificial revelations, which are able to express a different side of personality. In doing so a process activates, a process, which is at the boundary between the unpredictable, and control, between the wonder of the visual revelation of the nocturnal darkness and the deconstruction of internal identity of the subjects with an iconoclastic monumentality. A dualistic altercation between body and mind.
The series speaks of lucid dreams, fears, rage, violence, screams and shrieks of a critical period in which we all have been called to confront with our own bystander presence, our solitude, our life, long-distance relationships through the web, but also discrimination and bullying.
In the key image of the series we see portrayed a barely 11-year- old boy who, after a discussion, tells his difficult story. In fact, he was subjected for a long time to discriminations, insults and psychological violence by his peers because of his physical appearance. The following estrangement caused by the lockdown phase has brought an even more distinct marginalisation of kids towards their peers.
Therefore, through the observation and remembrance of fundamental actions at the boundary between enchantment and grotesque, in the series of images, we see coming to light some key devices for a post-lockdown vision through the filter of introspection and concealment, of what has found fertility in fear and has blossomed in all the following months of horrors. The impalpable incertitude regarding the future, the present and today, floods more and more forcefully into our lives as a shadow, forcing them into tangible and often invisible changes. The new digital realities have contributed to creating a double edge knife capable of making sure the development of situations of social gatherings, but also of strong discrimination, harming the sensibility of people who were already enduring cruel and difficult realities. In conclusion, the content of the images aims to understand those aspects, which the human beings tends to hide, deny, bury, and conceal, sacrificing emotions which, albeit unbearable and painful, are still human.
About Giacomo
Born in Varese in 1993, he graduated in New Technology of Art – Art and Media – at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, with a thesis on public commissions in Italy. Subsequently he continues, in the same institution, the Master in Photography and Visual Arts that will lead him to move abroad to complete his studies at the Hochschule Für Grafik Und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany. Since 2020 he is a contributor for ZONE Magazine and currently work for Phroom Magazine.
To see more Giacomo’s work, please visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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