Dissolves

Dissolves Photo Book The images I filmed in faraway places in days far gone intertwine in dissolves, are transformed into photographs

Stefano Maria Palombi Edition 01/2011

Dissolves

Stefano Maria Palombi Edition 01/2011

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Tired or, rather, exhausted after a day of sweat, dust, and emotions squared, I get on the jeep that will take us back to a bed or, perhaps, a simple hammock.

I force my sight out the windows as we pass from village to village. And the magic begins. The scenes that were filmed a few hours or many months and miles ago get confused with the images that are now passing in front of my eyes, in a series of very slow dissolves.

Everything is moving at fifty frames per second, in front of my eyes without a backdrop.

I’m here, in the poor and starry Chaco, but also along the Rio Madeira lit and shaken by lightning and thunder. Or in the sky, red as the bill of the Tucans, while behind me the huts of the Bakairi indios fade out.

I am here now, but there is another me who, swept like a cloud by the wind of Patagonia, crosses the drunken and sweet Sunday of Antigua Guatemala

and leaps across the shit-fragrant puddles of the slum at Kibera or enjoys through his tears the panorama of faces and shacks of the favela Rochina. There isn’t a fragile instant, there isn’t a detail which escapes the frame of my gaze.

In this way, I succeed in coming in touch with the life that is flowing before me.

Lord of an emotional energy, of a hypersensitivity that leads me inside, inside, inside all that I see.

And so, all that I have not been, that I lost along the way, all that has made living difficult, made me feel uncomfortable, alone, and perhaps unhappy, now comes back to me in a rush, with open arms. And hugs me tightly and kisses me and caresses me and whispers sweet words to me that make me fall in love.

Like a shaman, I look at this world, these faces, these walls, these skies, and feel at peace. Full of very beautiful words that flee away from me and that I shall have lost forever. Full of thoughts

that make me feel light, full of limpid visions that bestow an infinite number of existences upon me.

A peace as contagious as one of the diseases that so worry me and that in this moment make me smile. A peace that moves with the slow paces of a young girl with wood on her shoulders and arrives in the beds of those who love me and have loved me. Peace and visions. Without the peyote of the Mexican sorcerers, without the smoke shot up the nose by the blowguns of the Yanomani indios.

It’s a gift from the heavens, a gift for me.

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Dissolves Concept: SMP+ Texts: Stefano Maria Palombi Director: Stefano Maria Palombi Director of Photography: Leo Carbotta, Alessio Gelsini, Gianluca Laudadio Edit: Anna Poscetti, Stefano Maria Palombi Production Company: Cineteam Translations: Lyrical Translations www.lyrical-translations.com All the images come from the Eight Per Mille and Offerings Campaign in favor of the priests of the Italian Episcopal Conference. www.stefanopalombi.com

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