Surrealism

Disturbing eyes: the City returns a vacant gaze

Chronicles from the City at the time of the Jubilee works

”Look at Gabriele Basilico’s strange City!” suggest the ancient statue. Rome, Museum of Palazzo Altemps, December 19th 2024.

Ever since work began to beautify the City for the Jubilee 2025, someone, I suppose from the municipality of Rome, came up with the ingenious idea of sprinkling the fences of the endless construction sites with the image of a wide-open eye gazing at us blankly.

Whether they are a vaguely blasphemous reference to the Lord who sees all, or rather to Orwell’s Big Brother, some laughable conspiracy theory about the occult powers that watch over us, or a memento mori that is a little out of place, the fact is that all these vacant and omnipresent eyes have a surreal and slightly disturbing quality.

Indeed, images of wide-open, outsized eyes in general have this alienating aspect, even the ‘unofficial’ ones that fill the entire city along with the former.

Over the past few months, I have taken ample advantage of this opportunity to obtain ironically absurd images of the city, several incongruent eyes have been featured in previous collections, but now, to exhaust the theme with the remaining photos, I have composed a collection dedicated to this strange way in which we and the city look each other in the eye.

The upside-down city watches and laughs at us. Rome, Piazza Risorgimento, December 10th 2024.
The Imperious Eye. Rome, Lungotevere Castello, January 25th 2025.
The gaze of the night. Rome, Borgo Pio, November 20th 2024.
Another eye and photography: an ironic reflection. Rome, Via Goffredo Mameli, February 27th 2025.
Surveying an empty bench. Rome, Lungotevere Prati, January 9th 2025.
Unofficial eyes. Rome, Via della Lungara, February 27th 2025.
Looking into the void. Rome, Via di San Teodoro, January 30th 2025.
Let’s look into each other’s eyes! Rome, Via di Santa Marina Sabina, February 23th 2025.
The disturbing gaze of the post-apocalyptic gladiator. Rome, Via dei Pettinari, February 6th 2025.
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Pietro Coppa

Nato e vissuto a Roma, fotografo per antica passione.

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