Rome reminds of a man who lives by exhibiting to travelers his grandmother’s corpse.
James Joyce, Letters, 1906
Caput Mundi is Felaco’s visonary journey through the streets of Rome. The capital is living a complex historical period, and hostage to misrule and corruption. It has built up a debt of around 13 billion euro over time and the city is more tired and neurotic: one citizen in five is over 65 years old and on the other hand the young people have many difficulties finding a suitable role in society.
Rome reflects a historical period of decadence which Italy is experiencing nowadays: an omen of a sad implosion. Felaco thinks that what is hidden in Rome’s destiny is also the case for the whole of Italy. Like a symbol of decay and detoriation. His work and book is a travel of a personal research of such kind of symbols, a presentation of fragments that makes up a framework for the condition and fate of Rome.
His artistic practice is born out of experience and as a migrant , for seven years already he lives in Rome, he has a quite objective point of view. For him it’s most important to tell the rich history and culture of this awesome town, but also the decadent state the city and its civilians. Every picture in the book acquires strength through the relationship with the other images and an important feature for the photographer is the experimentation and playing with the photographic language. This leads to maximize the tale and his point of view. Thus, every picture has a symbolic function or acts as a metaphor which expresses some topics of the contemporary situation in Rome. The book layout is built with a structure of couples. The pictures facing each other offer a visual dialogue and try to develop a symbolic or visionary message. The main idea is to create a visionary narrative. The basic elements for this story are very intimate pictures combined with others that been flashed out. Images of structures, a girl and a flower, old people versus the young ones, close-ups of sculptures and…
I find it a well succeeded effort to narrate this Roman situation and for me it’s even more a story of the old Europe or the Western civilization in general which is rich in cultural heritage but is also in decay. The future for the coming people isn’t that clear and light anymore as it used to.
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INFO
1st Edition, 2018
100 copies
22 x 31,5 cm
80 pages
Softcover package
English / Italian
ISBN: 978-88-942794-7-4
Available from here.
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