Umberto Eco, in one of his writings on the theme of beauty, at the end of his reflection says that, over the centuries, the experience of beauty has always been what you feel being like this, as if from behind, in front of something we are not part of. He also states that the painter who really celebrated the experience of the sublime was Caspar David Friedrich, author of the painting which the man in the photo looks. These pictures, part of a collection started in 2017, become, like the paintings of Friedrich, an invitation to separate us from the direct experience of vision and therefore of beauty, forcing us to look at the daily show through man, the other men. These simple photographs investigate the theme of man in space in which the limit no longer becomes the frame of the image, but man, the emotion whose gaze is unknown to us and for this reason very close, in the imagination that holds together curiosity and beauty of the world, and that it is everyone’s right.

When I photograph people from behind, I like to think that not invading the space of their privacy, I’ll never know what they’re thinking, what might make me understand their gaze. I will not even know their face and this leaves the stories open, feeding them with endless possibilities. What are they looking at? What are they thinking? Are they sad or happy? Do they cry or smile? What feeds their gaze now that I can’t see what’s in front of them? While I am the center of an imaginary sphere, these people become the solid angle that connects my gaze to theirs and, for a moment, it seems to me that there is no filter between us.