I’ve always been fascinated by people, by how they behave in social environments, how they interact and engage with each other, and in particular with strangers. Have you ever observed the stream of people in the streets around you? How, nowadays, most of them walk busy in “isolation mode”, immersed in the screens of their mobile devices or simply in their thoughts? How they behave when something unexpected interrupts their flux, something quite intrusive, such as a perfect stranger, asking for taking a photograph of them? Will they consent? And if they do, will they let the photograph capture something of them? How much will they be open to the lens? Will I be able to really capture something beneath the mere exterior appearance?
At the end of 2017, I decided to embark on a street portraiture project in between a social experiment and a photographic self-assignment, giving myself few simple rules: to only photograph people I meet by chance in the streets of Lucca. No candid shots. No staged photos. Focus on faces. Eye contact through the lens.
For this long-term self-assignment, I’ve already collected more than 800 photographic portraits of people I casually encountered through the streets of my hometown. I remember each and every one of them and I’d like to thank them all for their trust and their openness towards a stranger who bothered them on the streets armed with a camera, asking to pose for a photo. What I slowly started to see is the beautiful, kaleidoscopic, collective face of my hometown. The following is a small selection of the portraits taken in the first months of the project. If you wish, you can see it unfolding on Instagram @lumafaces.
