Raw to the Surface

Raw to the Surface aims to suggest a new approach to fashion photography, one that moves away from the bidimensional and digital displays and challenges the conventional ways visual fashion material is experienced, letting the raw component come to the surface and reveal the slightly disturbing side of the fashion image. Raw can be intended as uncooked, almost unfinished, but also, referring to the skin, it can indicate a part of the body that is “red and painful, especially as a result of an abrasion”; a scraped area of the body that reveals something of its inside, as this project aims to do. Starting from my interest in the female body and skin in photography, I developed my research on new forms of display that I began during the Master. I linked the study on decollage and physical manipulation of the image, with the interest in the role of the viewer in the consumption of visual material, in the age of fast-images and social media. I recognised a constant stillness in fashion photography consumption, which remains that, with the subject in front of the picture, even through a screen. The final outcome is an interactive exhibition composed of four different works, all linked by the common interest in the inside/outside limit, that makes human body so beautiful and mysterious at the same time. All the artworks are designed as independent installations, as the pictures themselves are not enough to convey the message. This is why the display mode becomes essential to work together with the images and bring the project to life using space, time and the viewer’s choice to take the responsibility to move or manipulate the objects exhibited.