DEATH IS A PHOTOGRAPH
a project about death and photography
“We no longer study the art of dying, a regular discipline and hygiene in older cultures; but all eyes, at rest, contain that knowledge. The body knows. And the camera shows, inexorably…”
— Susan Sontag
This is an on going project started in 2021.
I never thought I would make a project about death, until I met a stranger named Jardin by the river. I asked him to be my self-portrait and told him that I had lost a person I really loved. He replied: "I can even cry for you." His acceptance that day gave me the courage to break the taboo around this topic and start this project.
If there was a river separating life and death, could I sample it? Could I use photography as a way of exploring different points of contact? Could I find peace in the face of our fear? Could I accept the unacceptable without becoming cynical? Writer Demetrio Paolin said in an interview about the suicide of a child: "As a good electrician's son, I know that when a light bulb is about to burn out, it emits for a few seconds a brighter light than its own voltage." Was it true?
I started this project in 2020, during the second wave of the Covid pandemic, the day a student of mine committed suicide. I wandered along rivers, looking for other people who had witnessed tremendous loss. At first, my interest was in mourning and what is called the ambiguous loss. But soon, I realized I had questions that were forcing me to dive into all sorts of experiences that intertwine life and death: mortal accidents, transplants, near-death experiences, funeral planners, mediums, killers, gravediggers, ghost hunters, death doulas, forensic medicine, end of life, Palaeolithic burials, suicide in jail... I also asked people to fake their death and act like it was real.
I met Davide Giardino known as Jardin on the bank of a river. I asked him to be my self-portrait and told him that I had just lost someone I loved: he replied “I can even cry for you”. Milano, 2021
In 2016 Giovanni Stucchi had a severe heart issue that almost killed him and left him 7 days in coma. Since then, a little part of his foot was amputated, his marriage has ended, and he had to change job and lifestyle to match his new health condition. I asked about his near death experiences many times, he kept telling me of the very first breath of a man coming back to life. When he opened his eyes after the coma, her sister commented: “Giovanni, you're going to tell us what it means to resurrect”. Parma, Italy 2023
Irene Nonnis is an undertaker and thanatoesthete. She started working in funeral services when her mother committed suicide and nobody wanted to touch the corpse. I asked her to join me in an experiment called “Faking Death”, like a performance that Jeff Wall did in 1978. She chose the way she wanted to be buried, she called her friends, she dug a grave herself and prepared everything exactly like she wanted. Imperia, Italy 2023.
Chantal Raimondi is a medium and a writer. She was one of the finalists of the beauty contest Miss Italia in 2010. She told me that she has been attacked by the Devil many times. Today she's the founder of the "Call the Lord and Repent" institute. She sees herself as a mystic and says to be in contact with "purging souls". Casaprota (Rieti), Italy 2024
During Covid, I saw a temporary chapel to host prayers and votive candles. The Sanctuary of “Our Lady of Lourdes” became in 1858 one of the world's most important religious sites. People believe that the water and the prayers you do there have powerful healing powers. Lourdes, France 2022.
Emma Grima was my assistant when I started taking portraits of people mourning by the river. She’s a Maltese photographer and at that time she worked on a project about abortion. Milano, Italy 2021.
Irene Nonnis is an undertaker and thanatoesthete. She started working in funeral services when her mother committed suicide and nobody wanted to touch the corpse. I asked her to join me in an experiment called “Faking Death”, like a performance that Jeff Wall did in 1978. She chose the way she wanted to be buried, she called her friends, she dug a grave herself and prepared everything exactly like she wanted. Imperia, Italy 2023.
My assistant built a camera working backwards. If I wanted to photograph something, I'd have to put it inside the camera. He was misdiagnosed cancer and I was in love with him. Milano, 2022
After a student of mine took her life, I moved to her studio because I could not let her go. There was a darkroom there. Milano, 2022
Nunzia Marmo told me she has a delicate gift: she’s visited by spirits. She’s very Catholic and helps families that have lost loved ones and try to communicate to them after life. Nunzia has successfully passed a test about mediumship organized by researchers from the University of Padua. Cesano Boscone (Milano), Italy 2023
The Anatomical Theatre of Padua, completed in 1595, is the world's first example of a permanent structure created for the teaching of anatomy through the dissection of cadavers. Padua, Italy 2023
Elisa Mercadante was my student and we both have lost a friend that took her life during the second wave of covid pandemic in 2020. I invited her to the Adda river to mourn. Elisa only said “I’m bringing a handkerchief”. Elisa is a photographer and an educator that would like to start a project called “Crack” to investigate the very moment in which something breaks within ourselves. Milano, Italy 2021.
From the Spallanzani Collection. Reggio Emilia, Italy 2023
Nina, Martina Frullanti, has studied as End of Life Doula, a profession that is not recognized yet in Italy, and therefore she works as voluntary. Nina has founded an experimental program of death education: she collects end of life testimonies through autobiographical writing and introduces the content of the Living Will. Siena, Italy 2024
In 2016 Giovanni Stucchi had a severe heart issue that almost killed him and left him 7 days in coma. Since then, two fingers of his feet were amputated, the wife left him, and he had to change job and lifestyle to match his new health condition. I asked about his near death experiences many times, he kept telling me of the very first breath of a man coming back to life. When he opened his eyes after the coma, her sister commented: “Giovanni, you're going to tell us what it means to resurrect”. Parma, Italy 2023
Alyna Savga got sick when she was only 19 years old. Since then, she has received two lung transplants and has had seven rejection attacks. She was in a coma several times, she reached the point of weighing 33 kilos and was disfigured by bedsores. However, Alina found love after the transplant, she managed to travel a bit and she is an activist and a member of the Lung Transplant Association of Padua. Lung transplant recipients have an average life expectancy of five years. Pianiga (Padua), Italy 2024
Alberto Moni underwent a liver transplant in 2015. In the past, his family struggled to accept his life as a gay man and he attempted suicide because of this. In the 90s he worked in famous clubs as a fashion host, contracting AIDS and becoming sick due to substance abuse. Now he is back living peacefully with his parents and often dreams about the donor that gave him a new liver and a new life. He is a practicing Buddhist. Calci (Pisa), Italy 2024
Davide Ferrari is a music therapist working with people and children close to death and madness. Genova, 2023
Irene Nonnis poses in front of the cemetery where his grandparents are buried. She became undertaker and thanatoesthete after her mother committed suicide. Imperia, 2023
At this point of the research, these are the things that I have discovered for myself:
The more you ask people about death, the more they speak about life. Even a person who had experienced a terrible accident, almost died and was in a coma for a long time, he would talk to me about that very first breath of coming back to life. He would talk about resurrection.
Everything in our life is the dominion of the dead, our culture perpetuates itself through the power of the dead as we follow continuously their footsteps in every aspect of our life: music, homes, words, monuments, literature, etc. Robert Pogue Harrison stated: “There exists an allegiance between the dead and the unborn of which we the living are merely the ligature.” We hold on one hand all the people of the past and on the other hand the future of the unborn. And yet, think of the temporal lifespan of the human species and the abyss of time behind and ahead of us. I'm afraid of time now.
Many of the things that I discovered about death are physical. Death is chemical. It is wet, not dry. It is not still, it transforms things. It has to do with our fear of darkness. When I work in my darkroom with water and poison, transforming metals with light, feeling afraid of the dark, I feel closer to death in a way that it’s difficult to explain. For this reason and many others, I decided to work only with analogue photography using an 8x10 large format camera. I’m also experimenting with daguerreotypes which were called “mirrors with memory”.
To investigate mourning and illness is to investigate the struggle of who wants to survive. When I got closer and closer to the death of those who don't want to die, all my plans, all my psychology studies, all my theories exploded. The End requires silence, rigidity, cold eyes. I can talk only of a death that is distant, I can talk about death as an idea, feared or idealised. When death is present, when death is killing the person that stands in front of my camera, all reasoning explodes. Death is like a God, omnipotent and mute. Since there are no words, perhaps there can be images.
The project has led me to seek the help of the University of Padua, where I joined the master's program in Death Education directed by Ines Testoni. I started teaching and sharing with students the way in which artists and photographers have narrated the experience of death or mourning.
My own photographic research contributes to the field of death studies by offering a visual and artistic approach to a topic that is often neglected or taboo in our culture. I hope to challenge the stereotypes and prejudices that surround death and to foster an individual deeper understanding of our existence.
This project benefits by the assistance and collaboration of Andrea Lanterna.
“From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share with anyone who has been photographed.”
— Roland Barthes
The project is still on going. If you have a peculiar experience with death please contact me