Toward and Into

Toward and Into is a photographic project in the form of an art book.

Shot within the landscape of the river Rhine, it represents a temporary escape from contemporary life: from a reality which emphasizes individualism, productivity and sense of control to a parallel one of contemplation, surrender and sense of belonging to a whole. From a dimension that is mostly detached from its natural surroundings, to a more essential and sensorial one.

The whole book, through both its content and its form, aims to evoke the experience of flowing. This experience is both physical and mental. Images describe not only the actual being close or into water but also how the artist/viewer longs for it, imagines it and recollects it. Going “toward” water is as meaningful as being “into” it. Natural elements, objects and the human body give visual form to the artist/viewer’s state of mind, mimicking the shape of water, as they resemble and transform into one another. Fabric plays a major role in it: like water, its form is undefined and ever-changing. Through its folds, creases and ruffles, through its distensions and contortions, it aims to provoke a visceral reaction, a sense of movement and direction. Images follow one another in a continuous stream, as the artist/viewer progressively moves at the landscape’s rhythm and dissolves into it.
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Thanks to the book’s “leporello” binding, photographs are arranged on a single sheet of paper and their positioning creates a wave-like progression, while their sizes and the blank spaces determine a rhythm. Images can be experienced alone or coupled on a normal double spread, but also as the full sequence and in multiple combinations by extending and refolding the pages. The viewer is free to diverge from the suggested sequence and to play - to drift, dive and resurface, creating their own visual and mental associations.