alberto maserin
copyright © alberto maserin
The project attempts to explore the different layers of social, political, economic and cultural implications that occur when two different communities confront each other.
This work has its roots on the influence produced by the American community living and working in the N.A.T.O. base of Aviano in Italy upon the local area and community.
The Italian rural countryside, through the presence of the American base, becomes the setting of a latter day Spaghetti-Western where American and Italian traditions and presence collide and coalesce into a new form, neither Italian or American.
The work is based on my childhood experience of perceiving priests as having two different identities, one before and one during mass itself.
The sacred vestments of the Catholic religion have the ability to transform the priest into an embodiment of divine power, giving him a sense of spirituality, status and power.
My work uses documentary photographic portraiture to examine the transformation of the individual clergyman’s personality, through the dramatic alteration of their appearance once dressed in the sacred vestments.
Sometimes when a bird flies away it leaves behind some feathers as evidence of its presence. This happens to us as well; when we die the objects we used to own or have touched still retain our presence somehow in the memory of the people who loved us. This journey to my grandfather’s house was a beautiful moment, to feel him living again, before time blows away the last memory.