Final studio project description & target magazine

Inspired by Luigi Pirandello’s play “Six Characters in Search of an Author”, this photography project aims to explore the relationship between characters and theatre practitioners. In particular, I wanted to show the importance of the actors' interpretation to bring their role to life.

A character itself doesn’t have any physical quality, it is only a concept, a fantasy creature born from an author's mind and it becomes alive only after someone takes and plays its part.

In order to illustrate this process, I took two pictures of each practitioner positioning them on a theatre stage, the environment in which the “transformation” takes place. In the first shot, I have asked to close their eyes and show the bare appearance of the role, without revealing any emotion; I wanted to portray the character as an empty container without a soul, featuring only the aesthetic appearances of the subject. In the latter, I have asked the actors to think in depth about their role and to interpret it, bringing its personality to life.

By presenting the two pictures side by side, I hope to make this contrast effective and give food for thought about the boundary between a character and its performer’s personality.

For the target magazine of my studio project, I have finally chosen Aesthetica as a suitable publication. This British magazine covers every form of contemporary art, focusing on photography, visual art, fashion, architecture, design, film, music and performance. With a print and digital readership of over 340,000, a national and international distribution, it includes both emerging and established practitioners.

I believe this magazine would be an ideal publisher of my work since the project I have developed covers the interactions of a range of artistic disciplines: photography, theatre performance and visual art. The target audience of Aestethica is interested in different cultural fields and my project is meant to convey multiple forms of art.