Book Review: Home is Home (All Alone) By Guido Gazzilli

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Book Review: Home is Home (All Alone) By Guido Gazzilli

December 13th, 2023 by Walter Borghisani

Quiet, relax
you’ve lost your head
you’re rambling.

Come on, onto the field
heat your blood
as you must.

It’s good here
aim don’t err
look outside.

The sky is in pieces
it trembles it hobbles
it carries its cross.

Don’t think about it
drink it all up
there is more to drink.

Sharpen the swords
fill the cup
that’s fine.

It’s almost dawn
you were blind but now, yes now,
you begin to see.

It’s good to dance
You have been freed!
I freed you!

But now run!
Away from here!
Do not stop.

[Gabriele Tinti]

Home is Home (All Alone) is inspired by Gabriele Tinti’s verses on the Faun. The Faun is a nature deity belonging to Roman mythology. God of the countryside, of the woods and of the flocks, he has always symbolized creative fullness, the power of life which in its overflow, in its exaltation and reaching maximum intensity, transforms into destruction and death. The Faun is looking for his place and shelter. In this chaos he fights, builds, destroys, meets, leaves, falls in love, losing control. He runs away from the normality of things in search of his identity. The city doesn’t want him and he doesn’t want the city and, in the end, he reunites with nature through which he finds a balance with himself.

Guido Gazzilli’s project is the photographic compendium of an allegory: the metaphor between his life and that of the mythological figure of the faun.

09 @Guido Gazzilli

“This fragmentary work expresses my greatest feelings through the enchantment of the forest of nature and is a backstage of my life, of my things, of the respect I have for animals and people of nature.”

[Guido Gazzilli]

Home is home (all alone) is a diary of shots in raw black and white which further roughens its subjects. A roughness in which everything is perhaps less defined, but more true. They are notes that come from that underground that Guido Gazzilli investigates, trying to bring to the surface his reflection on the human condition.
They are, above all, stories. Of places, people, artists, looks, bodies, suburbs, dreams, sometimes degradation. It is undoubtedly a book of research: the search for shelter, for a place called home. Of a dialogue with one’s solitude, also in anthropological and existential terms, of which this project is a eulogy.

10 @Guido Gazzilli

“During the construction of the book I found myself moving house by choice and living in the woods, coming from the big city. It was a project that I wanted to share with someone and we were happy to do it, then everything, as if by a tragic spell, was broken and destroyed. And I remained alone for two years fighting to rebuild myself and my inner home and also the one that offered me shelter. Hence the title of the book.”

[Guido Gazzilli]

In Home is home (all alone) the photograph is not of the street but rather the street, if not a real house, which the author disseminates with clues. And, in fact, the book hides pages folded on themselves and false pages bearing disappearing messages. Sensations, and some small tricks to guide them. What I like about this book is an emotional sincerity capable of touching everyone in a different way and based on different personal experiences. It is a book that I greatly appreciated and which will make you reconsider, to the detriment of a didactic idea of photography, the possibility of a more instinctive approach.

01 @Guido Gazzilli

Guido Gazzilli teaches in the visual arts academies of Rome. His works are aimed at analyzing the identity and conditions of the human being, through personal and subjective narratives. He spends most of his time on the streets, portraying people and places as personal diaries, often focusing on youth subcultures and music scenes. He is represented by Contrasto Agency. His works are published in the main newspapers including: The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Internazionale, El Pais, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, NatGeo.

…and the Faun? The Faun, well…understands that home is not a physical place but is himself. In a solitude that becomes a process, a movement, a landing place that, paradoxically, cancels the solitude.

Home is Home (All Alone)
by Guido Gazzilli
Text by Stefano Ciavatta, Guido Gazzilli
Poem by Gabriele Tinti
Designed by Fiorenza Pinna
Hardcover with 5 foldout pages, 16,5 x 24,6 cm
184 pages
126 duotone ills.
English
ISBN 978-3-96900-135-6
Euro 44,00
Published by Kehrer Verlag: https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/guido-gazzilli-home-is-home-all-alone
Guido’s webpage: https://www.guidogazzilli.com/

03 @Guido Gazzilli

08 @Guido Gazzilli

About Walter Borghisani

www.walterborghisani.com

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Location: Online Type: Black and White, Book Review, Portraits, Street Photography

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