VISION-MADE MATERIALS

The concept of material related to (urban) nature and photography.

A photography book
by Federica Delprino
2017

What is a material?
On dictionaries it is “the substance of which a thing is made or composed” or “anything that serves as crude or raw matter to be used or developed”. Then it seems to recall something just that can be touched.

But can a material be immaterial?

With materials we create things, which can be 3D objects in the space but also intangible artifacts. A piece of wood can be used to create a table as much as just a texture in a photography. The second one is the moment
in which combined materials can become really something else. The form, despite the
structure, becomes the key element.

Tridimensional and visual compositions, even made of the same elements, can trigger up very different results according to our perceptions.


All images have been rotated, some of them also mirrored, but no one deformed. Also dates and places are real.
So, each photo is incorrect according to every-day reality but assumes a new meaning when cut and shown without precise spacial references,
If we see the original shot we understand that in this serie they are rotated; but if we don’t know where they are from, we considerate them as fresh and original beings.

Then, what’s real and what can be defined “fake”?
And what’s the true subject?

Maybe it is the amount of events that happen during a particular day, or on the other side the level of pleasure given by the aesthetics.

These are the materials of everyday vision: not 3D objects but sets of textures which we identificate as bi- or tridimensional according to our knowledge. We recognize colors, as shadows, lights, etc. and we rebuild perspective in our minds.
Ore we keep seeing them as raw patterns.

Same images can tell different stories.