Italy has been on a lockdown for weeks now and people have been confined to their homes, leaving the cities’ streets and popular sites completely empty. Graziano Panfili, a photographer from Rome, has created a series of work on Coronavirus titled “Cartoline Dalle Webcams Italiane” to explore this phenomena.
These postcards are completely the opposite from the colorful postcards tourists bring home from their vacation in Italy. Taken from 18 webcams around the country, they are absent both of any color and people.
The silence of these photos speaks louder than any news anchor or another statistic. These black and white images are nothing less poetry that freezes one of the most important moments in the history of Italy and the entire world.
What urged you to create this art project?
I am a photographer who expresses himself through a photo camera. During the quarantine period with its restrictions, I have no way of going out and photographing this sad historical event, but I felt the need to externalize and mark the nights and the days I lived, the desolation, the silent nights, the empty concrete, the nature that is regaining its space. I managed to achieve it thanks to the technological eye of the webcams, in front of the monitor at home. For a few days and nights I photographed frames, street corners, windows and everything that mirrored my mood at the time.
What is the message you want to share through your work?
I have no messages to give, I just want my artistic visions to act as a collective memory when all this is over; a documentation that makes man think about the consequences of the actions he carries out every day, from the smallest to the largest, starting from his family to the rest of the community.
To see the full series visit Graziano Panfili’s official website https://www.grazianopanfili.com/Postcards-from-Italian-webcams
