"Belltower" (1993)

When I was young the things I was best at were skin-diving, billiards and drawing. To skin-dive well you have to forget about the water and breathing, in billiard your opponent, the cue and the felt, in drawing the pencil and paper, and in all three it is the absence of intention that perfects your gesture, making it harmonious and efficient.

I began to draw when I was five. At eighteen the distance between object and image consisted solely in the time it took to outline it, shade it, colour it.This is because I stopped: you cannot be both architect and labourer of you own fantasy, one of the two takes all the possible pleasure and either the making becomes a waste of time or imagining and infinite repetition gyrating in circles.

Photography has allowed me to invert this process, to wait for the existence of an image rather than plan it. To recognise it, sharpening my emotions like the sensitivity of my hands over the years. We train the hand to the stroke so the hand becomes the stroke; the body to the water so the body becomes the water, the eye to feeling so that your eye recognises your feeling for the world of things, or can perceive their feeling... (Read more)

Michele Alassio, 1995