When Domenico Matera got in touch with us about his photo series, A New Friend, admittedly the written theory that accompanied the photos was pretty dense. It seemed the 24-year-old engineering student based in Potenza, Basilicata had a lot to say, ontologically speaking.
The images themselves are beautiful. So we thought we’d catch up with Domenico to see what his pretty little horses are really all about.
VICE: Hi Domenico, lovely work. How would you describe yourself as a photographer?
Domenico Matera: I don’t like to put labels on things: I’m a photographer, but I don’t like to define myself as a photographer. Let’s say that I take photos. I’m in love with how our reality can be told through the medium of photography by combining ethic, aesthetics, and the soul.
Okay. So what’s your thesis regarding this project, A New Friend?
Through visual language, I investigate nature and feel a sort of primordial energy that, in my opinion, is present in the guiding principle of every living being. The word “being” carries with it a sense of decadence, forgetfulness, and unawareness. The brilliance of those connotations is that it illuminates our understanding, but it does so by confronting us with our own negativity. What reveals this to us is the word itself—or rather, the misunderstanding of the word, which translates physis (a Greek term taken from Greek philosophy, meaning “nature”) into ideas, and the genetics of being into the realization of the body.
Go on.
Through this project, I aim to highlight that the sensory, visual language formed through an empathetic union with horses does not distort reality through words, but instead enhances the mystery of physis, expressing it through the infinite possibilities of nature’s being.
So this idea of physis seems kind of important to you.
Physis is the essence of being itself, the foundation that allows beings to become observable and to remain so. It dwells in its own appearance and abides there.
I see. Am I right in thinking you’re basically saying words can’t capture our lived experience… that they can’t capture our experience in nature?
OK.
Is that what you’re saying? Because language is limiting?
Yeah. Because I think words misunderstand the revelatory power of nature that man is only given to perceive. I believe the universe lives in us. We can connect with it whenever we want, but we cannot explain it through words. Animals, in this case, horses, teach us to live according to nature, to follow a natural flow of events.
For example, when we were children we had an atmospheric perception of events. So we forgot about the passage of time and we were intimately interconnected with time and space. In my visual expressions, I explore the concept of mystery and the energy related to the universe and nature, and the sphere of nature in general.
Okay. Should we talk about the horses?
I think horses are extremely sweet and sensitive animals. I experienced unprecedented empathy through contact with them––they communicate and transmit so much positive energy. After all, human beings are aggregates of united particles. We spread magnetic fields of energy in space, and it’s up to us to choose whether positive or negative energy is transmitted. I have always thought it was really fascinating to think of ourselves as small, to absorb the infinite beauty of the universe and to start every day from scratch, marveling at everything and always living to spread hope and beauty, wondering where we come from and why we live in this world. Contact with these creatures has helped me to know a new world: sunny and friendly, full of energy.
Did anything happen in your life for you to want to hang out with horses so much?
It all started by chance. My region’s full of woods and green hills. I have come into contact with them very often. They are free in the wild, and I often see them. I was fascinated by how they live in groups, by their way of communicating and moving in packs, as if they were following a great flow of events. Their perceptions of the wind, the sun—their natural search for greenery and trees—has allowed me to investigate them.
What kinds of encounters have you had with these horses?
One afternoon, I went to a reading school half an hour from my city here in southern Italy, and I saw their life in contact with men up close. It was extremely fascinating to see how they were much more comfortable and confident with children than with professionals. I felt also as if they could look inside the soul of human beings.
What do you think the horses see?
I believe horses can perceive good and evil. I imagine they see inside the human soul that they trust with a boundless prairie in which to gallop freely, a place free from judgment, a home to share with…
I mean what do you think the horses see when they look inside our souls?
I think that when they look inside the soul of a human being they can perceive who lives according to nature, who loves the world around him because he is uniquely fascinated by it—and in these terms I think they recognize this propensity that children have, to be amazed and enthusiastic about the world, to always think of themselves as small, recognizing in something, absorbing from the world around them, only for self-knowledge.
Alright, that sounds really nice. Thanks, Domenico.
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Find more of Domenico Matera’s work on Instagram @_domenicomatera.395
The post Urgent: Look at These Beautiful Photos of Beautiful Italian Horses appeared first on VICE.
The post Urgent: Look at These Beautiful Photos of Beautiful Italian Horses appeared first on VICE.
