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“In portraiture and life alike, our eyes play an important role in communicating our emotions and socially engaging with others. The eyes are the strongest focal point and emotional indicator when observing a face, to try to understand or define the person behind that face.”
These are the words of New York City-based editorial, documentary, and portrait photographer Giovanni Savino, who I think we would all agree with. In spite of (and because of) this fact, he recently undertook a project that captures people with their eyes closed. Giovanni is intrigued by the alternative intellectual and emotional perception we have when we close our eyes and the reaction of the ones who can observe us while our eyes are closed. The project took place in a small hamlet near the Haitian border where his wife was born and where he has been photographing on and off for the past ten years.
For this project, Giovanni felt the need to reduce the sense of the ever-present digital workflow that has transformed the photography world. Because of this, he imposed strong speed limits on himself, using a wooden 4×5 field camera loaded with 3 ASA direct positive paper. This way, he could develop the portraits in the most organic way possible: on location, in a small tray, using locally produced coffee as his developing agent.
When we close our eyes, our main portal to human connections and reality, a potential new universe might open up the universe of the subconscious and the unconscious, possibly the antechamber of an afterworld.
With this in mind, Giovanni got to work, aiming to create a finished, tangible image straight in-camera. He was working in the heart of the Dominican Republic, with no electricity or running water. He fetched water from the nearby river, adapting to the warmer temperature of river water in development.
Giovanni hasn’t shown the project to many people yet, aside from a select list of magazines and galleries, meshing with his “slow and organic” approach to the entire project:
“In today’s fast paced world of relentless image production and consumption, slow is beautiful. Perhaps it is more beautiful than it ever was and it is well worth exploring. It certainly is an antidote to the rhythms of the everyday. My desire, albeit never being late for my client’s deadlines, is to hopefully continue practicing and teaching techniques and concepts behind slow photography for many years to come.
