Show Yourself to the World

On the other side of the river, two steps away from the sea, a girl waves her arms and whispers words that get lost on the sand; she mimes using two fingers of the right hand, making them run on the palm of the left, the desire to go for a walk - "you and me". He has a lively face, he wants to walk on the coast with the dawn of Ostia emerging from the Apennines and piercing the night.On this side, Marcello, with the dress torn by the long night, anesthetized by the fumes of the Dolce Vita and dull in the wind, shakes his shoulders."I cannot hear" is read on his lips. The smile of his lips is straight, with a arch that describes a semicircle from the side of the lip to the cheekbone, only on one side.The enging of La Dolce Vita, in the Fellini-like way of describing perdition through the lens of innocence, tells (also) of Deafness.This same deafness of Being in the World. Which Antonio Tonti summarizes in two principles of his work. On the one hand the image. Image as an interregnum of the absolute, as a broken crossroad of silent dialogue, as the murder of time and duration.Isolation from the other. Isolation built through incommunicability, through the celebration of the detail, of the glorification of the universality of the - and in - the particularity.As if it were the clear line of separation between sea and sky, delicately, Antonio Tonti positions himself in this thin limbo. And gently speaks about the horizon without being crushed by it. And without invading it or conquering it. The narrative - and not merely inquisitive - intent behind the camera responds to the purpose of the work. Run on the rope of the notorious without being swallowed by the obvious.Destiny, love, salvation, doubt, forgiveness, dreams. Antonio weaves all these canvases and sews them against the background of his photographic universe with the sole purpose of narrating, without hysteria, with the tranquility of the sea, this infinite detail that life is.The chiaroscuro, sweet like honey; the sea nostalgically in the background; the stolen pictures of intimate moments and the fragile effrontery of those who face the camera and live on the edge of the abyss. Melancholy reigns supreme. Beautiful, enveloping, soft, supreme melancholy.Ungraspable, soporific melancholy of an unfulfilled promise and a non-reciprocated word.Sensuality sails on the waves of insecurity, desire embraces the Faustian gorges of hell and in exchange for our soul all we receive is only - and please excuse me if it isn't much - beauty.And it is among melancholy and beauty that the photographer chases after for the truth, like looking in the mirror. That mirror which is the other, the other human being, who lets himself be photographed, who reveals himself, and through his nakedness he shows us ours. Weaknesses, frailties, concupiscence, misery, insatiable desire.Isolation and fragility. This underground and intrusive need of the other to be someone. Because without it we are lost in the wind.