The surreal, everyday life
Leonardo Pucci’s images are stolen fragments of life, poignant visual short stories drawing on themes of loneliness, sensual intimacy, emotional significance, capturing the tender tremor of possibility in everyday incidents. In the series “Suspended Possibility”, shown in Crux gallery in Athens, Pucci’s images are mostly shot at dusk or at nigh-time, inviting us to reflect on the meaning of intimacy using the lens as an indiscreet eye on moments in the lives of individuals or couples completely unaware of being portrayed in the same spaces where they feel protected and at ease.
Far from hedonistic attributes or voyeuristic tendencies, this series evokes feelings of fragile tension, a weary sense of everything being private but exposed at the same time. All images are fragments of the same story told again and again, through different interpretations of fantasy, time, space and coexistence.
The photographer states that “they are crystallized instants and therefore appear strangely like a canvas that everyone, naturally and effortless, recognizes adding his own meanings, tales and emotions which go beyond the image itself.”
It’s no surprise the artist has chosen the place and time of the shot to be meticulously reported for each photo, creating a false idea of narrative flow…”This eventual story is made even more plausible and acceptable because it draws directly from the mind of the observer, from his dreams, his desires, his memories and not least from his need to have his own reverie told.”
Raymond Carver could have easily written a piece enraptured in Pucci’s images, and Hopper would definitely be prone to depicting it with his sharp brushes. But it is Pucci’s strong use of color and play between contrast, light and shadow that end up being the tools to tell his very own slice of art.
“Suspended Possibility” resumes and amplifies the photographer’s previous project “Episodes (without a real order)” that made its debut last year at the Robin Rice Gallery in New York and was curated by author Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi.
Leonardo Pucci – Short Bio Self-taught photographer Leonardo links his first photographic memories to his father, amateur photographer: “In the ’70s during the many trips with my family my father documented everything with a Yashica Mat 124G 6×6 minutely studying poses and shots. Transparencies were his passion. That black contraption with its two glass eyes seemed magical to me: he would look into that little window on the top and the box would capture things.”
Even today photography has a somewhat magical side for Pucci, something surprising, an unexpected narrative which goes beyond technique, while on the other side there is for him a ceaseless search for a sensual touch in the composition, in the way the image is cropped, in the proportion between elements, in the voluptuous yet rigorous use of colors. Curious and attentive to everything that happens around him, for more than 20 years Leonardo Pucci has been able to nourish his eye for beauty and conception through his work in fashion at Italian and French maisons, such as Bottega Veneta, Prada and currently Dior, supervising creative and development processes. He lives between Paris and Rome.
All images © Leonardo Pucci
Crux gallery
Sekeri 4, Athens
