Photographs to Know Who We Are

To understand a photographer’s poetics, we cannot limit ourselves to looking at the work. This statement may seem paradoxical, but only to those who think an image is an end in itself, self-referential or the product of a purely technical exercise. When, instead, we encounter a strongly structured expressive journey such as Giorgio Di Maio’s, we inevitably turn both to the architectural training that guides his gaze and to the passion for philosophical reflection that gives substance and support to his research. These two aspects merge in a vision characterised by a rigorous exploration of composition: not merely a response to the scientific laws that give coherent meaning to the interpretation of reality, but also an expression of the concepts of harmony, balance and inquiry that matter to him. The essential quality of Giorgio Di Maio’s photographs is the outcome of sustained reflection on the meaning of objects, their place in space and time, and their appearance not as walls erected to conceal the view, but as matter worthy of investigation. If there is a strong impulse to seek not one truth but the many coexisting truths we encounter, then even observing the alternating movement of stairs, wires pursuing one another in mysterious connections, or details brought together by chance can lead to the discovery of abstraction as the hidden nature of reality’s many facets. Giorgio Di Maio always chooses a palette of delicate shades that we might call Mediterranean, also for its allusion to the region where, centuries ago, the great tradition of Western thought was born: a tradition we can still draw on today to ask—with words, music and images—who we really are.