In Giuseppe Tornatore’s classic thriller Una pura formalità  the main character, a brilliant but troubled author, is subjected to a grueling and tormenting police interrogation, causing him to perceive his own eventual demise and continued presence on earth as a dead man, a lingering soul. This is the origin of Onof : a metaphorical expression of our existence in this world as the predominant product of our society – crude, blissfully unaware and wholly self-concerned beings, merrily serving a design in which personal gain is won through the systematic exploitation of others, resulting in destitution and misery.

In an apparent contradiction, my attempt is to make myself irrelevant as a ‘photographer,’ shedding the baggage associated with preformed identity, leaving judgments and opinions behind and replacing them with direct and uninhibited connections. This also reflects on how these images came to be ­– out of an experienced state of nothingness, where the 'person' was not present and had no say in things.

In photography, I choose to negate the type of role(s) we have to play, the type of identities we have to assume, just so we can be in this world. In concurrence with this ideology, I‘m primarily interested in portraying people of the so called ‘lower walks of life‘ : the hobo drunk, the ex-con, the street hooker, the impoverished pensioner. Those who, driven by the immediate necessities of securing their existence, have overcome the ‘carnival roles’ that most of us have adopted as a personality substitute. Documenting their space represents an opportunity for me to bear witness, to communicate freely and to recapture the humanity lost in the process of my socialization.