Self-portraits in studio with hair caught on some plants of Dipsacus Fullonum here called roses.

“Roses” meanings.

I took these pictures during the Lockdown of 2020. In my studio background I put bunches of Dipsacus in little vases. I entwined my strands of hair to the thorns of Dipsacus’s sprouts.

The Dipsacus Fullonum refers to the idea of death, compared to the roses that, instead, symbolize beauty, colors, life. Dipsacus has its flower of thorns, no petals, no colors, no smell, it attracts dust and spider webs; it doesn’t have the same caducity of the roses, it is dry, eternally.

I am interesting in the contrast between the permanence of the past, that is the dryness of Dipsacus’s flowers and the transience of Roses.

Repetition compulsion

In these self-portraits I photograph the gesture of a separation, the separation from the past in whose thorns I remain entangled, the Dipsacus inside my hair.

This gesture repeats itself endlessly, in a “repetition compulsion”, until I become a ghost. The “repetition compulsion” is a way of trying to heal undigested trauma, mostly from our early years. We get caught of the mechanism of our mind, they are just mental patterns that we ourselves build.

Series insert in the Lensculture Gallery