There is a peculiar kind of beauty that emerges when light meets darkness, not in a dramatic way but quietly, almost hesitantly. And this subtle dance between presence and absence, clarity and obscurity, sparked the idea behind my latest photo project.
To be honest the seed was planted last year, after visiting Luigi Ghirri’s exhibition Zone di passaggio. One thing in particular stayed with me: some images that proposed, as the exhibition text explained, “a reflection on darkness, with the aim of narrating the important value it holds in the collective imagination.” It made me pause because I had never really thought about darkness that way: as a passionate photographer, I often chase the light, be it early mornings or golden hours; darkness is always something to avoid.
But something shifted after that exhibition and I began to wonder: what if darkness wasn’t a void, but a presence in itself? What if I looked for the in-between moments, the fragile places where light is just temporarily visiting?
The opportunity came during last Christmas holidays, when I returned to my hometown Barletta. I started walking at night, with no particular destination, just a camera and an openness to notice. I searched for “places provisionally lit,” as I had read in the exhibition notes. I wasn’t sure what I would find or if anything would be worth capturing, but I walked anyway, looking for something interesting.
What emerged was a (very) small series of black and white photographs, quiet images that document corners of the city where artificial light draws brief halos in the dark: Christmas decorations tangled around trees; someone walking under a street lamp, a closed gazebo lit by a stray spotlight.
Sure, I know these are not grand images. They are, if anything, tentative studies more than statements. However this exercise taught me a lot: photographing at night, for instance, was entirely new to me. I usually take pictures in the daytime, drawn to light and color, but here I had to learn to embrace grain, shadow, darkness and had to let go of control and welcome unpredictability (a life lesson, indeed).
What struck me most, though, was how these illuminated “fragments” took on an almost symbolic “weight” as they seemed to speak of transition, of moments that exist briefly before dissolving. In that sense, they echo what the maestro Ghirri captured so well: the feeling of being in-between—between presence and absence, movement and stillness, day and night.
This is just the beginning of a “visual conversation” I would love to keep exploring. The series is far from complete, and there are so many ways I could push it further: technically, conceptually, emotionally. But I’m grateful for the experiment, and for the way it’s opened a new way of seeing. Sometimes, the best light isn’t the brightest, it’s the one that flickers gently in the dark, simply asking to be noticed.
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