#michele cera

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Dust

© Michele Cera

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Michele Cera

From the series Dust

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CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO SEE INSIDE

Michele Cera - Dust published by Kehrer Verlag (2013)

The new book by Mr Cera looks at a country still in a midst of a decades long reconstruction after multiple wars and economical troubles. Cera has taken us to the outskirts of Albanian towns to show us what he has found.

To me the series shows a country that appears to be going backwards. While most of the world is moving forwards, the rubble and unfinished buildings in these images hint at destruction rather than construction. So for me the title 'Dust' hints at a place possibly returning to dust. Many of the people in the images seem lost, not necessarily in terms of placement, they all surely know where they are, but in terms of uncertainty and not knowing what to expect next. Are thing getting better? Worse? Are things actually progressing? Or have they become stagnant.

taken from a brief conversation with Mr Cera "..Albania today reminds me post war Italy (that was a "dusty" place indeed). Francesco Zanot in the interview commented about people in the photographs seeming coming back from a conflict and I appreciated this remark. Moreover, I wanted to give with my photographs a sense of existential precariousness. There is a relation between the landscapes and the figures in it: both are in an uncertain and precarious state. So the word dust also refers to this idea: dust is something that is going to disappear like our human existence (and "We are dust and to dust we shall return").