WHERE SILENCE REIGNS

NELLA TARANTINO

// Nella is an architect from Napoli, Italy, now living in Agropoli. Some six years ago she quit architecture to devote herself exclusively to photography, which she previously did with analog cameras, but for which she now uses a digital camera. She shared a series entitled “There, where silence reigns” and explains how photography draws her into a quiet zone.

“Within yourself is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself”

Herman Hesse

What draws you to the arts?

“I love art in all its forms. I am an architect, and I have always studied form. Through photography, I no longer draw buildings, I try to draw with light. It is a much more difficult goal!”

What do you like best about creating this series of black and white landscape images?

“I almost always realize, and I cannot say whether in the landscapes in which I lose myself, it is a question of places or of faces, of figures, and, then, in the photographs, that I find myself facing, each time, to something both familiar and unknown, as if these places, these figures, these faces, had always been part of my deepest landscape, and at the same time, I see them for the first time, like dream places, unknown figures and faces. When this happens, I feel that a small miracle has happened, I feel that it is “good photography” which has succeeded in penetrating “a timeless time to infinitely develop the poetry of the gaze, which is for me, form and sign of the unconscious”. Like a fatality, through a wound, this photograph detaches itself painfully from me and approaches to capture me, as in a reverse process to the shooting, in the unfathomable mystery of its appearance.”

About her photo series “There, where silence reigns”, Nella wrote poetically:

“Photography is my “zone”, where silence reigns, where time has stopped.
When I photograph, I go beyond the barbed wire, the guardhouse, the last light on the asphalt.
When I photograph, I become a stalker, I enter the zone of alienation without realizing it, like a fever, I follow desire, I scrutinize chance, life, destiny. I immerse myself in the mystery, and I forget.
He looks in my face for the last time at all I lose and walks away.
All the veils are removed, the old plasters, I finally see.
When I photograph it is as if I come back to life, the more I touch the ashes and the wind, and when I enter the darkness of the labyrinth and the depths of the swamp, a fire rises towards me, but I don’t come back, there is no more time.”

Click on the photos to see the full image with title, some images may be cropped for layout.