Pan Infrarossi

Uveitis is an inflammatory process affecting the uvea, the thin vascular layer of the eye that lies between the external ocular membrane, composed of the sclera and cornea, and the retina. The term uveitis, however, is generic and identifies various inflammatory forms that affect the uvea, which is made up of three parts: iris, ciliary body and choroid. The inflammation can affect the uvea in its entirety and is called Panuveitis. The causes can be multiple: inflammatory diseases, diseases, autoimmune diseases.
I still feel the remnants of a rare acute bilateral Panuveitis, which arrived on december, 9, 2023, the causes are still unknown. To this day, I still struggle to focus when shooting.

I felt the need to make concrete the emotional state that had caused this trauma and I felt the need to overcome it. In this, art is liberating and, despite the constant references to that period, re-facing the illness through the camera gave me a profound sense of expressiveness. For fun and training I picked up a Hoya Infrared photographic filter (R72) and started shooting. The comparison came naturally: just as in the acute phase of the disease I had a filter in front of my eyes that allowed me to see very little, in the same way I mounted an infrared filter in front of the camera lens which greatly underexposes. But, with the right exposure times, the photographic filter allowed me to see beyond human visual perception by capturing details that the human eye cannot see.

The project presents six triptychs, in each triptych there are two landscape photos and a portrait. The triptych is a temporal sequence of the place that is constantly still, abandoned. A search for farms, farmhouses, jazzi and petrol stations in the upper Murgia, mostly agricultural archaeologies, which become one with the natural landscape that surrounds them. The third photo of the triptych is the portrait of a man or woman who, looking at that place, becomes aware of the state of abandonment and of being unable to do anything in front of that decadent human construction. The people chosen are the same people who looked at me, with the awareness of not being able to do anything in the face of the disease: my family and me, who looked in the mirror and saw no solutions.

I deliberately chose to leave the red color of the filter because when I stop to look at the images I almost find it difficult to stay on them for a long time. The color red is meant to annoy, it wants to convey a photophobic and burning sensation, as happened during the illness. The images are red like the sclera of the eye which changed from white to red during the acute phase.

This project started from a personal trauma, but while I was shooting, while I was researching the places and then in post production, I felt the need to convey the territory that surrounds us through these images, and to lead us to reflect on how we can take care of it, so as one does (or hopes to do) with the human body.