This is an unpublished project premiered today on C41 Magazine.
Gabriele Onere is a photographer born in Trento in 1995, living in Milan since 2018 and currently studying at the Italian Institute of Photography where he is also leading the path of assistantship. This parallel path was of great help in terms of professional growth.
After three years of work experience in the field of commercial photography in Trento, he chooses to start a parallel photographic journey reasoning on a personal vision of today’s society, with a precise work of aesthetics and a conscious use of the photographic tool. After this journey, he choses to live for a short time in Taranto, where he develops a photographic project with the aim to inform about the situation of the city in relation to the production of steel of the factory, AncelorMittal also called “Ex Ilva”. His research is obtained through a direct evisceration of the social classes and the role they have in a society who lives in a place with infinite natural resources, which are contaminated by disease. From here he begins a more intimate work about his origins and the city where he was born and grew up, which for work and personal reasons he had to leave.
In the last projects, and in particular in this one, called “Istinto”, he decided to work only in 4×5. He is fascinated by this type of camera and he thinks it is important to learn how to use it in as many situations as possible, not only in the studio.
“Attracted by the ambiguity of society, he explores the characteristics and oddities of a specific place, coming into close contact with people and landscapes”.
About ‘Istinto’ – words by Gabriele Onere:
There is a rather common condition of dissatisfaction that leads the human being to
moving from their home country, seeking serenity and satisfaction elsewhere.
This kind of situation often borders on the definitive open-mindedness towards new experiences and the rejection of one’s own origins. It leads the individual to an emotional detachment that, at the moment of return, destabilizes the inner balance he has found by moving away.
This project comes after a long period of incompatibility, separation, disappointment,
reflection, confession, understanding and acceptance of the place where I was born and lived, Trentino.
I decided to spend the lockdown period in Trento, with my mother, whom I have seen very few times in the last two years. So I found myself forced to live, for 3 and a half months, in the place from which I escaped.
Instinct takes power in a moment of need: when my eyesight is clouded and my hearing muffled. He wants to put order where reason cannot come. Therefore, a completely uncontrolled curiosity was born in rediscovering places, customs, and peculiarities that belong to this region, which have resurfaced naturally after two years of total absence.
I decided to rediscover this rural, closed, autonomous place.
This work is not a research, I would define it more as a drive, born out of the need to represent a place in an objective way and at the same time conditioned by one’s memories.
I decided to travel to my home, where I was born, where I left, where the wounds remained open.
