Cycling and walking along the western coast of Liguria (the Mediterranean coast in the northwest of Italy) between October and May, the places you come across, usually crowded in high season, are a mix of a recent end and a new beginning.
These are moments when even nature tries to reclaim some space.But almost always, the places are “without”, without the recently dismantled tourist structures, without people, without a certain order dictated by tourist hospitality.
The lines are purer, the colors even sharper, the spaces become regular. Some things are under maintenance, others are closed or simply empty. And so, for a photographer, opportunities arise to tell stories that have never taken place. You can imagine paths through the empty spaces, environments that will transform, or simply will become populated.
These shots, for example, can tell of the geometry and rigor of the beach cabins, which enter into a perfect color palette with the sky and the sea. Often you can put together diptychs that refer to each other with colors, shapes, and lines. The beaches are separated from the promenade by barriers that become slender protections, inviting to be crossed more than deterring the curiosity of those who observe.
Then, there are the first (or last) traces of sunbeds and umbrellas arranged on the beach, which are nothing more than micro geometric backdrops contrasting with the sometimes not always calm sea. The striking images are also those of bars and kiosks that remain unlit stages of a show yet to be performed, allowing the mind to construct stories of all kinds.
The strong midday spring and autumn light create strong chiaroscuro effects with the empty structures and make them even more alive. Children’s play areas look like nothing more than catalogs from a magazine or are little more than outdoor warehouses, ready to be reopened and come back to life. Sometimes one gets the feeling that these places could suddenly come to life.
It takes patience to observe these scenes in the right light, to be carried by the sensations and sounds that can be captured in a shot, to activate the imagination, and for a photographer, this becomes a stimulating zen exercise. The project was built, initially unconsciously, over about five years, during which I increasingly sought that common thread between places that represented what my mind had connected over time. A project like this (which includes over 200 selected shots) could only be built by traveling and photographing alone. It needed time, space, and working methods that would not have suited a group or a collective work. The result can be read in various directions. For example, one can retrace a day through the “without” places, with passage through barriers, stages, and scenes until the end of the day among the games waiting to come back to life. Or one can follow the path of each element. The barriers, cabins, and stages have a “group” story. They have shapes and references that create satisfying diptychs or polyptychs even for the most geometrically or chromatically demanding eyes.
And here’s another value of the “without.” You are guided without being forced into a single interpretation, you have spaces to construct your own stories, you find elements to populate the places with other images and extend the common thread. The mind can find satisfaction simply from the clean lines of the individual images and the well-blended colors, or as in a collage, recomposes its mental path to populate it with its sensations. “Liguria Without” is stimulating the birth of “England Without” the parallel project that tells stories of beaches and tourist places along the British coast, offering reflections, lights and sometimes very different geometries, but equally “without”.
About Paolo Pastorino
Paolo Pastorino started taking photos on elementary school trips with an Agfamatic and 110 film, then moved on to his dad’s Ferrania in high school, and finally to 135. Dozens of slide carousels shots captured his vacations in the ’90s and 2000s. With the arrival of digital photography, he noticed after a while that he was trying not to include people in landscapes and photos in general. So a number of projects started to be built on the concept of telling stories of places and people, but without people. He uses different digital cameras as well as an old 6×6 analog camera, in order to have the maximum flexibility in representing the story in the optimal way. The project “Liguria Without” went through the mentorship program of the Society of Photographers in the UK, the Folio Review of the Photographers Gallery in London, and Portfolio sul Po for Portfolio Italia (FIAF). [Official Website]
