2 years of Street Photography during a pandemic
Regardless of how you think about everything seems clear to me that the reality we are experiencing has profoundly changed us. As photographers too.
Pandemic - Mexico City, 2022
When at the beginning of 2020 when the news of the onset of covid and the first measures began to spread, I began to observe everything while maintaining a certain detachment that my own profession requires. It was not at all simple: I live in Mexico but I am deeply connected to Italy, precisely where the most alarming news came from. I also call my family several times a day. So I always have. In all these years.
At that time I was busy with my first personal exhibition, AMERICANA, and I observed during the month how freedom was tightening even if honestly here in Mexico we have never suffered as much as in Italy. I observed the world around me. I meditated. I made up my own ideas. And I've never stopped photographing.
The AMERICANA project had focused on desolate landscapes, cars and buildings, empty streets. Seeing them reproduced by photographers who couldn't do otherwise during the first lockdown made me smile bitterly. Many of them photographed without enthusiasm and without real interest. And it was clearly visible. You can't think of improvising yourself as an urban landscape photographer without a studio. I photographed empty streets when the streets were not empty. And to say the truth here in Mexico never stopped to be busy.
In analyzing the situation, I began to think about my return as a classic street photographer. How could I document this historical action of humanity? How could my photograph be useful as a visual document of what is happening?
I have always considered street photography as a kind of alternative journalism. A way to document the everyday and the things that apparently are not relevant but which instead can offer valuable documentation of the human condition. And I realized that the 28mm would not be useful for my purpose. I had to stretch the focal length. Lenses that made me stay more distant but still able to make me enter that intimacy through the vision that certain focal lengths offer. Lenses that can be also an excellent solution for portraits.
Anyone can see what is the result in my photography after 2 years. From meditating and respecting the new situation, I changed myself as a photographer, changing a little my approach (not that much to be sincere) and I can say that I found myself through these 2 years.
We are living a particular phase of the history for the humans. I am perfectly aware that I am a witness of my time, a difficult time, more difficult than those who have gone through a war, because we are experiencing a war, albeit radically different and perfect with the threat of a world war which in any case will be different.
