Before the beginning

Human beings feel proud of having control over subjects and situations. Intellectual and technologic activities points in that direction, and art is not an exception.

Artists choose a topic, tools and techniques, and then try to integrate elements and ideas with a systematic method or by improvisation.

Photographers express feelings and emotions either by capturing vanishing instants or by constructing something they imagined. And even if they press the shutter button randomly, what they get is caused by a premeditated action.

But occationally something happens to me during the most trivial and innocent photographic act: loading my camera with light sensitive material. Only later my will commands. But what happened before that crucial moment?

Like a forgotten guest, Light surreptitiously enters through the back of my old camera and is received by the first few inches of film.

I realize that I am just a secondary protagonist: before the beginning of the roll, before the beginning of any act of will, Light was there like an always present spectre.

And when Light expresses itself it creates images without my intervention.

These photo-graphs are ghosts of something that never existed.

Aesthetic considerations aside, their message is present each time I take a roll of film, a delicate material sensitive both to Light and to my touch.

Just like a ritual I will follow preserving those portions of film that precede my photographic actions and an artist’ arrogance, and I will let Light to continue showing me the way.