To avoid offending certain sensitivities, we warn that the site contains explicit content
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email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
Bellum
Bellum in Latin means War and it is the title of this work of mine composed of ten plates.
The works recount ancient myths, deities of distant civilizations scattered across all continents. Their stories are terrible and still make us reflect because nothing or too little seems to have changed in the deep nature of man.
The woman in the photographs is an allegory of humanity with all its violence and desire for self-destruction. The twelve photographs enclosed in each work sometimes tell stories of wickedness and cruelty, sometimes of despair, other times attempts at reassembly and rebirth of the human race. Unfortunately, war is not only in the world, it is also within us who are individual prey to modern myths and the anxieties and frustrations produced by them. Even today, man is capable of atrocities towards his fellow men and his own relatives, often living in a state of inner war that becomes aggression towards others.
I am aware that this work is pervaded by a deep and pressing sense of pessimism, a vision of the possible imminent end of humanity. Nevertheless, some plates show signs that can nurture the faint hope of a new humanism, which I believe could be the only lifeline for a humanity unprepared for the possession of weapons of mass destruction and killer robots it now has. A humanity unprepared for the unnatural speed of “progress,” for the loneliness imposed by current society, for the sense of intoxication from expanded reality, through the virtual, which often turns out to be only frustration and loneliness. We are women and men alone, unable to live in solitude, yearning within ourselves for relationships but now unable to have them. All this causes tension, hatred, inability to listen, fears, feelings of lack when we have everything, the need to have what others have, good or bad. This happens in a world that sees the depletion of natural resources essential to humanity such as water and food. And while nature is being destroyed, the right for everyone to have the necessary food, the right to personal dignity, to equity, is also denied daily. The spirit of brotherhood is lacking, the will to peacefully and harmoniously resolve disputes, to care for each other beyond everything. In this world, man lacks the ability to care for himself and for others: things that go hand in hand, inseparable.
I see a lost humanity, I see its end, I do not believe in it, I can only hope for its survival and its happiness, both to be built and conquered, currently not of this world.
With only the hope for the advent of a new Humanism.