Cristian Iacono

I Am No Longer There is a visual investigation that takes shape from the experience of loss and the need to transform it. The images do not intend to document; they are traces of a feeling, opening a suspended space where perception becomes fragile and irrational, marked by what Joan Didion called “magical thinking”: a way of inhabiting the world where the visible intertwines with the invisible and—in this case—nature, in its capacity to speak to me, becomes a refuge, an interlocutor, and a silent witness.

Through photography, places linked to loss and absence are transformed into interior landscapes: sometimes traces to be preserved or cavities to be filled, other times ambiguous reflections, luminous erasures, or signs of a silent dialogue with what no longer exists. In this process, the photographic gesture becomes a magical and ritual act, capable of transforming emptiness into presence and giving body to the invisible.

The project moves through a reflection on photography as a practice that can extend beyond the visible and beyond the idea of a central observing subject. Perception is understood as a shared experience, in which mind, body, and environment reciprocally influence one another. In this context, the image is not just a trace or representation, but assumes a symbolic and active function: it becomes a place of relationship, capable of producing effects, modifying the gaze, and intervening in the way reality is inhabited.

The images of I Am No Longer There do not seek to fill the loss, but to restore space to it: they transform grief into a dialogue with what cannot be seen, a crossing that fosters listening and invites one to perceive life where there seemed to be only absence.