2014 / People / Life Style (Non-Pro)

A SHOP WINDOW ON THE WORLD

  • Photographer
    WALTER VIAGGI

“A SHOP WINDOW ON THE WORLD ” (The imaginary from the real) A shop window is not only a place in which items are displayed on sale but also a place in witch ideas and desires are vested. Although real, it leaves unlimited space for the imagination, both as a descriptor of man’s aesthetic and cultural appearance and as a configuration of man himself through the fashions, changes and stereotypes represented by the contents of the window. The visual and tactile reality of the glass blends with the imaginary while simultaneously opposing it because the medium of glass means looking in but also looking out, so that the onlooker is in turn put on display in a window in which the whole of mankind is open to view. Since glass also reflects, in the eye of the photographer the reality reflected mingles, overlaps and blends with the direct reality. The result is an entirely genuine fusion dictated by the imaginary, which expresses SURREAL sensations as continuous switches between reason and subconscious, removed from any kind of aesthetic design. The apparent UNREALISM which favours the world of dreams and imaginations is thus extrapolated from an image which is 100% real yet can mentally – never physically – be construed to represent an authentic moment of life. Walter Viaggi