metamorfosi
"Walking along the shore, with the sky immersed in shades of red, I watched the water, seduced by the moon, etching the shapes of bare trees into the sand. Suddenly, I found myself lost in a colorless forest, adrift in the swamp of time."
The ocean, through the tides, carves its design into the sand, creating an ever-changing pattern that lasts only until the next metamorphosis. Each wave follows the one before it—never the same, yet always in the same way—an endless sentence. Like an artist tormented by love, destroying their own work. This creation resembles a forest, as restless as the boundary between land and sea, etched onto the shoreline by the hand of the ocean.
At first glance, it is hard to imagine that such complex natural architectures could vanish in an instant. Yet the ocean erases everything, reclaiming its role as the eternal demiurge.
The photographs in this series, reminiscent of Dürer's engravings and Gustave Doré’s illustrations, reveal desolate, yet perhaps enchanted forests—captivating the viewer with an unsettling beauty. A reality both unknown and perilous, yet alluring, like the whirlpools of our own souls, where time is no longer perceived in its unfolding but manifests only as a limit—a relentless ending to something that, from its very birth, is destined for an ephemeral existence.
To venture into these fleeting landscapes revealed by the ocean’s waves is to seek answers in a reality that is both subjective and entirely beyond control. And what at first seems a confined space, fraught with danger, unveils distant horizons—stormy skies, eternal mists, and ominous clouds that blur beyond the bare trees of a dark forest, posing a question to the observer: flee, knowing that soon what you see will no longer exist, or stay and embark on the journey that fate has chosen for you?
These photographs were taken on the shores of Long Beach, California, a place where water and land meet in a shifting dialogue. The Port of Long Beach, one of the largest in the world, looms nearby, its presence an integral part of the landscape. The ocean, ever restless, carries with it traces of its surroundings—the natural and the industrial, the ephemeral and the enduring. The patterns left behind in the sand seem to tell a story, but whose story is it? Are these forms simply the ocean's fleeting expressions, or do they reflect something deeper about the world they inhabit? Do they hint at the remnants of wildfires, the delicate balance of ecosystems, or the silent marks of human presence? Nearby, the scars of recent wildfires in Los Angeles linger as another reminder of the forces that shape and reshape the landscape.
In the end, the images invite us to question, rather than answer. What do we see in them? A warning? A memory? Or simply the endless cycle of nature, indifferent yet ever-transforming?
