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The title la pelle (the skin – also: leather, hide, pelt) is a reference to both Curzio Malaparte's novel

narrating moral degradation and physical humiliation in Naples after Italy's defeat in World War II,

and the second skin quality of collodion, the chemical I use to coat the photographic plates. Collodion dries into a

skin-like glutinous film that was also used to dress soldiers wounds during the Civil war.

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Flipping through an old family photo album, I was shocked finding an embarrassing 1938 portrait

of a relative as a young child clad in the uniform of Mussolini's youthful followers. 
I was struck by the contrast between the child's innocent face and the horror stirred up by his uniform and posture and decided to re-photograph the portrait to denormalize the image.

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"Evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over time by obedient people

who fail to think."

– Hannah Arendt, political scientist and philosopher  

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Note: This series is a work in progress. 

La pelle can also take the form of an installation in which the images are wheat pasted on an outdoor wall,

gradually decaying overtime.