Talking Peppers

Fotografia di Giuseppe Persia

Talking peppers were born almost by chance by observing a yellow pepper which from a certain angle looked like a human body. After overcoming some obstacles such as light, the development of modified negatives and the use of microscope optics, given the short distance, the Nus Nous project was born, which means the body and the mind. This project, which began in 2000 and is still being implemented with new images, currently consists of about 1000 large format negatives (4x5 inches). The project was made in analogue gelatin silver photography and is printed on paper in a cotton support and toned with selenium, as expected for the photographs hosted by museums. No interventions have been made with retouching software, the image is the one that is on the negative, once the print is obtained some small touch-ups are made with a brush where there were small empty dots caused by the dust present in the emulsion of the negative, no other intervention is done. At the beginning of the project, when I participated in artistic events, I noticed that observers stopped for a long time to admire the photos, often tilting their heads as if to observe the rotated image. Hence the rotating photo, an image mounted on a painter's easel and placed on a support that allowed the observer to rotate it. In summary it was found that not everyone, looking at the photographs, saw the same thing, often saw completely different things in the same image. The image does nothing but explore the most remote areas of our mind by re-emerging old memories of when we were children, mostly related to toys, puppets but also landscapes and / or particularly exciting situations.