During yesterdays tutorial the question was raised whether the project should be called Via Miracoli or not…? This remark kind of catapulted me, quite literally, into SPACE! I was addressing this issue at the dinner table and I was asked to explain why I have chosen to name the project “Via Miracoli”… hmm… to put it simply: It is about this street. Even though the project is based on Walter Benjamin’s essay on Naples as a whole (AND the city as porous, of course) I can not pretend that I have covered a bigger radius of the city. To begin with I had the idea to create a concertina style book and the whole project was shot in this way, so that I will be able to re-create the street. I am interested in the small, the defined space but at the same time by photographing it in detail, this defined space expands - it’s a paradox and this is what the project partly is about. The photographs show the banal, the everyday, the “not noticeable” - the project is intentionally divorced from the spectacular and I would like to keep this spirit. In one tutorial Peter Fraser mentioned that we should listen to our “small” inner voice, to which we hardly ever listen to because we get distracted/confused by so much external input. So, the tiny inner voice still says Via Miracoli - I think after all (and an almost sleepless night) I stick with this idea.
It was a challenge for me during the shoot not to get bored of the street and now by designing the book it is an even greater challenge to make it not boring for the viewer..! Somehow the online version doesn’t do justice to it. By looking at the test file on issuu I think the book quickly looses momentum. The other day I printed out laser copies of the pages and stuck them together, this allows you to fold, to extend and to make new juxtapositions of the pages. The viewer can improvise with the book as an object and I really enjoyed this playful aspect. As a next step I will put all the pages together in one long file to see how it “feels” online, if it is possible to get a sense of one whole street.
I also made the background a bit darker but it doesn’t show it on screen and I will have to experiment further for the online version. The printed one will be either on Hahnemuehle bamboo paper or sugar cane paper , both papers are textured and pastel colored and should be perfectly suited for the main subject matter (and here it comes again) - porosity… :) Good old Process Supplies on Mount Pleasant stocks the paper, this is one of the jewels of photographic shops in London. But before all the printing can happen, I need to continue with editing, finalizing the street and then comes the hardest bit: to kill the baby(ies) - aka photos I am really fond of BUT don’t add to the work will have to go… I have reached a point in the editing process that I need the critical input of Peter Fraser and hope this tutorial is going to happen soon! I have to keep up the positive faith - today I feel quite low about the project..
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