Mariangela Gallo
Body Texture (Series)
DESCRIPTION
With this project I wanted to experiment with textures using black and white photographs of the body. For the first time I’ve excluded colours from my works to focus on texture. I’ve explored the body in an abstract way paying attention to the shapes and its sculptural potential. I wanted to depict is as an autonomous, bidimensional subject in contrast with the textures created to complement it. At the same time, I didn’t want to deprive it of its main element, its human identity so I decided to tell a story through shapes, textures and the sharp contrasts between smoothness of the body and roughness of the textures created, between black and white.
I took the pictures, I printed them and then I manipulated the pictures using paint, gesso, tissues, cotton, seeds, rice, sand, cling film and other objects to create texture. Then I photograph them again. I feel that by interacting with the print I can finally give a form to memories, dreams, feelings, all things that were there during the shooting, but you couldn’t see.
AUTHOR
I spent most of my life shooting and painting. When I finally realized that I need both, and they don’t need to be separate works, it set me free.
I’m not interest in creating fantasy, abstract worlds, and I’m not interested in appearances and descriptions either, but what I need to make sense to, is the world around me and all its people. Both the environment and every living being in it are constantly changing and their most significant traits are invisible to the eye. So, I asked myself how could I use photography to talk about something invisible?
Paint is a wonderful medium that opens you to infinite possibilities, but this versatility was a limit to me as I need that deep connection to the world around me that photography brings.
Photography is deeply linked to what we see, to the physical reality. Many scholars have discussed this topic at length, much better than I could ever do. It may be ‘the death of reality’, a ‘hyperreality’ or a ‘minute part of reality’, in any case its profound connection to the world that physically exists it’s undeniable.
But when emotions are involved, and we look at reality as something
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