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COVID19 Reflections

Courtesy of Max Cavallari

Max Cavallari

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Four Walls

This series explain the feelings felt in the first days of national lockdown. March the 9th Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared national quarantine (first picture), from that moment no one was allowed to stay outside from their houses. That changing came so fast that people didn't know how to react: fear, loneliness, emptiness were some sensations felt. This little selection shows the first 10 days in the house with my roommates, before leaving it to go to live alone cause of my job. Being a photojournalist could be dangerous for them, being outside, spending time in hospitals and risky situations could be a risk to bring the virus at home. Right now, it's two months that I live alone but in few days I will come back to them, when lockdown will end. Looking forward for it.

Into the Anthropocene. I investigate places throughout the Western United States where the natural ecosystem has been altered or destroyed to provide for our burgeoning populations. In the Palouse grasslands - now wheat fields - of eastern Washington, a mono-crop landscape terraformed through agricultural commerce creates a sense of bucolic perfection while disguising the underlying impact of single crop planting. Old and new energy extraction techniques are compared using images from the largest thermal solar plant on earth at Ivanpah in California, and the Cholla coal burning power plant near Winslow, AZ. Finally, the “bathtub ring” high water mark - which will never again be attained - at Lake Mead in Arizona illustrates how the demand for water has changed the landscape. In each location, I was simultaneously dazzled and disturbed by the scope of these transformations - many occurring in my lifetime. What was revealed I found compelling - strangely alien but completely human. By allowing human intervention to speak over the landscape itself in my images, I imagine a new landscape, more of its Age, that expresses dilemmas faced when considering exploitation or preservation. 

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