The legendary photographer Fan Ho was an initial inspiration for this project, with his depiction of industrialization in 1950's Hong Kong; high contrast images of everyday people dwarfed by their surrounding environment and part of a wider organism, almost like cogs in a machine.
Strangers from the Shadows adapts this idea to a contemporary European context, specifically urban 21st Century Italy. What was once seen as the land of ancient traditions and slow-paced living has been gradually globalised, becoming a fast-paced society amidst an on-going digital metamorphosis.
In Milan, everything will be all right if you just keep moving - don’t stop. Speed is the name of the game. Milan’s central station is the epitome of this; a portal to the city through which strangers hastily enter and exit, crossing paths as they commute to and from work.
Each figure is anonymous in the crowd and the bright lights surrounding the shadowy silhouette is the only trace of their presence.
The shadow represents that obscure side within us which lives outside of our ego or cultural influences and reflects who we truly are behind the curtains; a mystery even to ourselves.
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is"
- Karl Jung
