Displacements

Gabriele Lei’s black and white photographs are deliberately anonymous, lacking a place and a time to create a sense of visual standardisation and displacement.

My latest work Displacements is a series of photographs selected from my archives.

I have been fortunate enough over the years to travel extensively both throughout continental Europe and in the Far East. My gaze has always been drawn to places that, although initially seemingly bland, on closer scrutiny are able to narrate themselves and their stories via a number of signs and details. Conceived as a continuous sequence, the Displacements series has no documentary intentions: the pictures are totally anonymous, lacking a place and a time to create a sense of visual standardisation and displacement. It is up to the observers to decipher the picture and discover fragments of their own experience in it.

Gabriele Lei, *Displacements*, 2014. 10 gelatin silver prints, 20 x 25 cm each

All the photographs in the series were taken on an analogue medium using a Leica camera and 35 mm and 50 mm lenses. I am a firm believer in the attraction and intimacy created by observing an image from the proper distance. That is why I decided to produce the silver-halide prints in a small format – 20x25 cm each – to force observers to move closer to the photograph. Gabriele Lei

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