Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l’Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l’Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.
(extract from “Spleen”by C. Baudelaire)
Where I come from, even the air is melancholic.
At dusk, when the light gives out its final rasping breaths, ghosts come out from the bowels of the earth to remind you of who you are.
I have breathed that air for years, and I have lost count of how many times my lungs got filled and emptied of that “pneuma ” of existence. Melancholy gives back to us our most solid and sad awareness: the idea of the end.
All that is left to do, with aware forgetfulness, is to deceive our fate by facing the spiteful barbaric fury of our times and transforming our existence in resistance.
From the lungs, that scent of death has found its home in the bowels and in the mind, drumming in our head the same incessant question: “Where are we going?”
Santolo Felaco (1984, Naples). Currently based in Rome. He attended advanced reportage with Fausto Podavini and a master about modern languages of documentary photography with Massimo Mastrorillo. He attended workshops with Ricardo Cases, Max Pinckers, Federico Clavarino and Antonio Xoubanova. In 2016 he found L.I.S.A. collective with Gian Marco Sanna and Dario Li Gioi. In 2017 he published the fanzine “918”.
In 2018 he published with Gian Marco Sanna the fanzine “But I love you” and the same year, with Urbanautica Institute, he published the book “Caput Mundi”.