Material-Design round trip

Exploring made possible by photography

“The exploration made possible through photography is to me real magic: the way in which one can decide to look at just about anything the way one wants.  Defining with the framing and the exposure what to express, what to see, what to tell. Deciding what to discover…by creating a vision, absolutely an intimate one, not real therefore an abstract one. It then becomes something else than reality, though at the same token, since it is within us that we are exploring, it is exactly there where the image imposes itself again to its full reality, thus becoming the sparkle of an emotion.

I would like to reveal the mystery of normality, explore the « extraordinary » which lies in ordinary things. To look for the beauty which exists in the infinite reality that surrounds us, where I think that I stumble onto some pieces of life that belong to me and to possess again the infinite reality so that she does not flee away any more. Since in a sense, it is this reality that surrounds me at all times.

Maybe all this comes also from the necessity I feel to find the path and the breath, an intimate dimension, almost an identity. So as no to feel myself as liquid in the contemporary ocean, in order not to perceive myself like dissolved into a fluid where big dimensions are the measure. An era where people, more than ever seem to disappear along with values, encounters, and loves: everything that makes us what we are and which encompasses life. Just like if it were a way of trying to react to emotions without flavours, to indifference, to superficiality of creations and words that do not provoke any more shivers

This photographic work is a discovery of the material.

Deprived from its function and rules, material becomes essence, a living entity almost in a romantic way since it is free to exist in a different way, for a different purpose. The abstract detail of a metal piece or of some design piece wants also to be a provocative and forceful thought about the value of things. It is a real journey in the little and intimate, searching for an aesthetic of the intrinsic. This aesthetic, which would be wonderful if it could become a personal journey for each spectator, within himself, where the capacity of feeling is being proven again and becomes an exaltation of the archetype, of pure beauty which shakes the sensibility, creates an emotive place where the material lives.”

© Mario Guerra 2011