Water memory

Ancient Graeco-Roman Orphic cults had the principal aim, in a highly secret initiatory context, of enabling adepts, at the moment of death, to access an otherworldly destiny similar to that of the effulgent gods. On these premises, the post-mortem journey of the initiate's soul, in the form of vivid symbolic images, was often described as an arduous itinerary, dense with trials, destined to enable the dead to rid himself of his burden of earthly dross, so as finally to achieve, thanks to the secret knowledge received during his life, immortality. A recurrent motif of the journey is “water”, here perceived as the fluid receptacle of the initiate's personal memories as well as an element capable of reactivating the subject's archetypal consciousness, thus reconnecting him to the original luminous principle existing beyond time itself. Inspired by the texts of ancient Orphic gold tablets – traditionally buried alongside the body of the initiate as a memento and actual guide during the journey – this artist's book, combining performance and photography, presents a series of images taken in the territory of the Trasimeno Lake, in the Italian region of Umbria, using pinhole photography. In this visual and visionary narration of an initiatory afterlife, the solitary soul is depicted dialoguing with its old memories and fighting the relicts of its past, placed between the risk of extinction in the abysses of nothingness and the possibility of continuing its journey to be finally re-united with its divine matrix. The book is printed in a signed and numbered limited edition of 51 copies.