“I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self (...) let fail all else”
Joshua Slocum, “Sailing Alone Around the World”
Simone Padelli developed this project during Folio 2021, the same class of Allan Salas.
At the end of Folio21 class, Simone made a book dummy of the project, but there was something that bothered him with the book and the sequence, he wasn't totally happy. so he let the project sleep for a while, concentrating on different projects.
Lately he went back again to the silent season, and now it is starting to turn in the right direction.
“In the tradition of ‘utopian literature’, the island, becomes a bipolar metaphor for elsewhere: a place to reach, where getting lost and finding oneself coexist and intertwine in the same defined space.
The concept of island is understood both as a self-sufficient universe, a magic circle that encloses and protects, but at the same time also a place of confinement, a claustrophobic trap.
This project is inspired by an Italian island, one of the smallest inhabited, with a population of about 10 permanent residents, and a perimeter of just 2 km.
This small confined space has been the focus of my photographic research.
Like a solitary player who relies on the chance of a roll of dice, also my experience with the island is marked by encounters with places, figures, situations that happened by chance.
As a flaneur, who wanders in the streets with the aim of knowing and experiencing, so I mapped the island in a casual way, transforming the environment around me in my own oneiric theatre of investigation.”
That’s it for this newsletter!
If you have any suggestions for interviews, features, topics, interesting work or photo books that I should check out, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach out!
Stay safe and keep shooting.
Kim
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