Gio Blonde was featured a few months ago in artCollective with her collaborative project called “Wild Romagna”.
This time she presents a very personal photo project called “Saints Daemons“.
The project is beautifully introduced by Gio:
“..I believe I glimpsed under the sun splendours that eclipse the sun and the very lights of the saints, when each figure was transformed into the icon of an exasperated paradise…, and mysterious glimmers rose in the flame. Then the heart competed with the objectlessness of the infinite, the delight of a divine solitude surpassed the absence of limits of divinity…” (E. Cioran, Divagazioni)
My mother repeated to me like a fable “The Myth of Er” by Plato, that before being born the soul of each of us chooses a design that we will then live on earth, and receives a sort of guide/companion, a daemon, who it is unique to each of us. But once we are born we forget all this and believe we came away empty.
It is the daemon who reminds us of the content of our image, he is therefore the bearer of our destiny.
The word dáimōn originates from Greek (δαίμον) and in fact means divine messenger, guiding spirit who is in a sort of middle ground, the same in which the soul resides, and acts as an intermediary between God and man.
For Aristotle, the daemon symbolised virtue and wisdom, the most enlightened essence of the human being, within which one’s potential is hidden.
It is always my mother who gave me every smell of sacredness. And this created between me and her (and between me and my Matrix) a particular, almost blessed bond, which I carry within and still seek.
When I say “there is no photography without trauma” it is a bit like this I believe: it is my personal rebirth that I try to relive with photography: every lack, every love, every mourning. Fear and desire.
If I think about the rooms in G.’s house, they are imbued with sacredness: Madonnas, crucifixes, rosaries, candles, paintings, sacred books.
Every story and every journey created a state of ecstasy in me. And fear.
By sacredness I do not mean a spiritual condition, I am referring to potencies & powers that man feels he has as superior to himself, and therefore they are, as it were, other & beyond human ones. My mother had them. I have it, when I photograph equally divine subjects.
Like my Daemons, I have always feared the sacred as I have always been attracted to it. It creates a sort of ecstasy in me, I forget every other thought; produces a state of true bliss. Every Madonna encountered. Every daemon photographed.
It’s the only way I know (so far) to remember my mother, to feel her. And give gratitude to this scar of infinite nostalgia.
by Gio Blonde @gioblonde_
The project features:
Alessandro @_acidonitrico_
Alessandro @_alepalliniAngelo
Charles @313_charles
Cosimo @fazzzhh
Emilio @yemilycensurato
Fabio @fabiofiorellino1
Francesco @_francesco_p
Giuseppe @instagshelen.official
Yari @yarifavaro
Michele @miche.palle
Nicky @dai.goro
Lorenzo
Giovanni @porladipeppa
Vincenzo @vincenzopalladio_
Tonymaccheroni @tonymaccheroni
artCollective Magazine 