PHOTO PROJECTS

SELF-PORTRAITS | RITUAL SONGS

RITUAL SONGS investigate suffering and self-love in relation to the divine. The photographs record the plasticity of the body in such a way as to reveal the presence of the soul and a lived space. They are carnal and visual prayers, like the sacred paintings of the Italian 12th century. Through the act of photographing, of imprinting one's own body form in a luminous space, the artist sought to initiate a cathartic process and focus on the spiritual crisis that occurred upon the death of her Master. When photography appeared, taking photographs was a ritual and symbolic act in both Western industrial society and traditional populations. Being photographed meant expressing the soul, communicating with the position of the body values and ideals of an individual and society. Ritual chants seek creative plastic figures of the body, which, as in tradition, can give light to deep feelings, capable of moving from the biographical to the communal and the universal. Photography is, therefore, a ritual performative action, which seeks to relate through the self-portrait body to Being. Self-portraits are rituals for discovering the verticality of the human being and thematising pain as a source of transformative relational and spiritual knowledge

RITUAL BODY

In the project 'RITUAL BODY' through the act of photography, Marco Balbi Dipalma investigates body positions in search of a state of trance, understood as a deep creative state, to activate a spiritual transformation through the experience of the body. The artist has composed and analysed different positions and their siginifications starting from dance improvisations, searching in plasticity for a ritual body. Photography is used as a tool to reveal the photogenicity (J. Esptein) of the position, the physical sentimental luminosity of the position. The research draws on anthropologist F. Goodman's studies of body ritual postures and the photographic works of Petr Stembra. The body is investigated as a vehicle of spirituality.