Pierluigi Vecchi
This is a fun blog post for me to write because it documents a collaboration with an artist I’ve meet recently at a recent show (Eroticamente) in Italy last September. It was quite spontaneous and it had been a while since I’ve done anything like this. This photo-shoot means a lot to me also because, it touches on current themes of spirituality which have a lot to do with what is going on in my life at the moment. I didn’t really have a preconceived idea of what I was going to do until the day we met for the shoot so, I improvised. I took with me whatever I found in my room that day and decided to let myself be inspired by the events and surroundings. We ended up walking around looking for church cemeteries which, was the original idea but couldn’t find any that were suitable so we ended up in an area of the Barbican right by the remains of the London Wall was the defensive wall first built by the Romans around Londinium.
I felt a strange sense of excitement and yet also a bit of sombre mood that day in that place that matched Eloiza’s beautiful pictures quite well. She tells me that for her taking pictures is a way of getting to know herself. I also believe that photography is a path to knowledge and I would even go as far as saying that it is a form of consciousness. Dorothea Lange the great American documentary photographer of The Depression era once said that “the camera is an instrument to see without a camera”. So, the camera in a way allows us to see in a different way to express the beauty of the soul through photography. It is that sense that I think this photo-shoot was spiritual because we both too pictures emphasising the hands the hands which are spiritual, the hands that receive and give love, that touch, that know, the hands that feel, that transcend our being as we raise them towards the sky…
Eloīza Rozentāle also happens to have a degree in religious studies which I did not know at the time so she laughed when I asked her if she knew how to pray as a matter of fact she said: “how do you want me to pray? Like a catholic or a protestant?” Can you guess?
