Geography

I am a traveler, and unable to travel to document territories in these years marked by armed conflicts, I have chosen to explore them virtually, using Google Earth imagery to create GEOGRAPHY.

Google Earth’s photographic system, composed of 12–15 cameras that shoot simultaneously, produces a 360-degree vision that appears total, seemingly objective. Yet it is precisely in the space between one camera and another that my interest lies: an error, a fracture in the image, a distortion.

Within these almost imperceptible discontinuities, a broader metaphor emerges. From war zones to the Western world, what reaches us is often an altered vision: information filtered and distorted by the political spectrum, where the objective perception of events and reality is constantly manipulated.

The technical error thus becomes a human error. The imperfect stitching of the image mirrors the imperfect stitching of the narrative.

When the war is over and we are able to return to those places, what will remain will not only be the visible destruction, but also the trace of that error: a fracture produced by human power, inscribed both in the landscape and in our way of seeing.

Directed by luca De Santis (Italy)