Inside the Italian school during lockdown in the shots of Luca Giorietto

In the history of art, it was Edward Hopper who recounted the solitude of the great metropolises with his paintings, using negative space in a revolutionary way to tell the silence and absence. A similar operation is carried out by Luca Giorietto, a photographer from the province of Rome who portrayed the empty classrooms and androni of the Guglielmo Marconi High School in Colleferro, in the province of Rome, to describe macroscopically the collective sense of anxiety and confusion that Italy felt during the lockdown through a series of microscopic details: red and white ribbons that brutally delimit the previously accessible spaces , forced distances, empty classrooms in which anatomical models and plastic skeletons seem disturbing memento mori and a human presence that is nowhere to be found. To accompany the shots, the words of the singer-songwriter and writer Etna, the artistic name of Alessandra Perna, who says:

«Taking pictures in this school was a way of portraying and documenting a mental state, reminiscent of Hopper's void: the desertification of the places where culture and thought are fostered. This high school was framed as a symbol of all those schools, worldwide, that have had to revert to social distancing. Of the suspension of socialisation as a tool we can use to learn how to not be afraid. These photographs captured a moment in history that will live on in the memories of the generations to come, lest we forget. We don't need hope: we need to learn where the obstacle is and how to get past it».