Written in 2013.
I often say that illustration is a redundant pursuit: why repeat, in another medium, what an artist has already perfectly said in his own? Yet, this is exactly what I did with my illustrations of the erotic poems by Giorgio Baffo (1694-1768), an aristocrat of the so called decadent Venice of the 18th century, and the author of the most extreme, most funny and most delicate obscenities I have ever read. I also keep saying that I don’t care to reveal my more intimate emotions. Yet I revealed them here – with as much detachment as an 80 years old man can muster. I believe and profess that the subject matter of a photograph is only a pretext, and that its main message lies in its form. Yet I undertook this project because I didn’t want to end my life as a photographer without having treated a subject that has been such an important part of my dreams, my feelings and my fulfilments. Like any artist, I wish to show my work, and the more it matters to me, the more I wish to show it. Yet in this case I hesitate – because I feel at risk. Sex is all at once such a universal and such a personal experience. I realise it every time I see the different reactions, of different people, to Baffo’s poems: some are enchanted, some shocked, some bewildered, some laugh as about a dirty joke. I guess (and fear) that the reactions to my photographs will be just as varied.
2008, Venezia, Italy, Baffo culi (c)