Face
planting and falling down photographed by Sandro Giordano.
For his ongoing photographic project ‘in extremis (bodies with no regret)’, italian photographer Sandro Giordano captures the downfall of man — literally. face plants, falling, belly flops and drops are the subject of the series, with men and women head-first into the ground, their belongings strewn around them in the inevitable mess.
For his ongoing photographic project ‘in extremis (bodies with no regret)’, italian photographer Sandro Giordano captures the downfall of man — literally. face plants, falling, belly flops and drops are the subject of the series, with men and women head-first into the ground, their belongings strewn around them in the inevitable mess.
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EXTREMIS (bodies with no regret)
« My photographs are “short stories” about a falling-down world. Each shot “tells” about worn out characters who, as if a sudden black-out of mind and body took over, let themselves crash with no attempt to save themselves, unable, because of the fatigue of the everyday “representation” of living, oppressed by “appearance” instead of simply “existing”. We live in a world of faces distorted by plastic surgery, which serves us “fixed”, “stereotyped” images, “image/object” in which personality sells itself to a preset marketing model.
« My photographs are “short stories” about a falling-down world. Each shot “tells” about worn out characters who, as if a sudden black-out of mind and body took over, let themselves crash with no attempt to save themselves, unable, because of the fatigue of the everyday “representation” of living, oppressed by “appearance” instead of simply “existing”. We live in a world of faces distorted by plastic surgery, which serves us “fixed”, “stereotyped” images, “image/object” in which personality sells itself to a preset marketing model.
I believe that perfection
is in imperfection, it is in strong contrasts, in frailty, and in the
humanity that makes each individual different from the next. I hide
the face of my characters because their BODY speaks for them, and the
fall is the point of no return. There’s a saying: “you must hit
rock bottom to start over”, well the “FALL” of my characters is
their “HITTING ROCK BOTTOM”, they reach their “LIMIT” beyond
which their “FALSE SELF” cannot go. Each of them saves an object,
they hold it in their hand and it symbolizes this falsification. This
pretence is represented not only by the objects but also the clothes,
the hairstyles and the location! Everything that is visible in the
picture represents their pretence while the smashed BODY expresses
the TRUTH, which has to, in fact, crash to be told! I never use
dummies in my shots; I use professional actors that are able to
interpret what isn’t visible, with their bodies, because I want the
invisible to be visible. Since I was a child I’ve always loved
films by Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy because they made me
laugh. In their films we often see terrible things happen to the
characters, serious accidents… the fall... The instinctive reaction
is bewilderment and awkwardness towards the unlucky fate of the
character but then that same awkwardness breaks into a liberating
laugh. This is the effect I want to recreate through my photographs:
tell tragedy through irony. A broken down humanity that I look to
with fondness and attachment and from which I myself don’t feel
excluded from. It is this feeling of empathy that allows me not to
judge but to share the stories I tell, in the hopes that if I manage
to get a laugh out of a spectator, this be a favourable auspice, one
of believing in a better and more AUTHENTIC future. That laugh,
finally, is a REVELATION. »
__remmidemmi (Sandro Giordano)
__remmidemmi (Sandro Giordano)
