Siam: terra degli uomini liberi

Alberto Lussana, a young photographer of daily life in the world, enters the strand of documentary photography with a contemporary attitude: his stay in Thailand is not narrated as a collection of curiosities, but becomes a tale of a part of his own existence, traversed by the life of the place and real people, in the classic tradition of straight photography.

The sequence of 27 images documenting ancient Siam in the 21st century follows the rhythms of thought and reflection on people, sport, dance, religion, light and objects. The photographs appear as objective accounts, albeit in interpretation related to the author's selection of reality. Some take the viewer inside a story, others prompt the viewer to imagine what is around, beyond the frame, without "tourist-like" or anecdotal complacency.

Men and children portrayed in frontal views looking straight at the lens, as if to capture deep and indelible elements, reveal themselves as a link between past and present; young women, dancers and monks, chased along architectural diagonals, tell their daily paths; beautiful shots of Thai rings and their audiences show the extratemporal value of the body. Night lights, soft glows, trajectories related to global urban development, cross streets and places of tradition, such as the market or festivals.

Things, objects, flowers taken up as geometric and colorful compositions have no aesthetic reasons, but hint at a real and concrete reality, which lives by mixing order, harmony and chaos, as coexisting contradictions. One might wonder about the meaning of such an exhibition in an age of global media: but the meaning lies precisely in seeing with the objective eyes of another the images born of the gaze, which is why photography still proves to be one of the best means of storytelling, now, as in the last century.

Text edited by Pia Ferrari