Japan Black Box

A black box, its contents unknown: such was Japan for me in 2009. Lacking extensive training in Japanese customs, traditions and society, I followed the naive approach of someone discovering a new world for the first time. Not knowing what to expect from the megacities, from the small towns immersed in nature and spirituality, from the cities tied to the worst memories of war, from the spiritual places of almost unknown religions, allowed a true and unconditional immersion in a new knowledge. Thus, alongside the photographic documentation of the wonders of the landscape, iconic works of man, places of memory and spirituality (which I imagined was the most appropriate photographic way for a first contact with a new land), an entirely new way for me to photograph these novelties was needed and ran parallel. The curious and amazed eye therefore naively and voraciously observed-with not even a too detached attitude-even the flashes of everyday life, the common places, the streets, the television screens that went along with totally incomprehensible idioms, the faces so different, so new, the alphabets coinciding with wonderful signs but emptied of any possible translation. The black box of Japan was thus filled with previously unknown objects, with cities different from all those already seen, with lights of new colors, with imagined forms that became real, sacred, profane, human, mechanical. A box filled in an unordered way. Filled with quick, inaccurate, inconstant photographs.  For the first time, humanity and its rhythm seemed interesting, new and different too.