Screaming Abdabs Gallery
‘Feeling Light’ is a fine art photograph by Rossano B Maniscalchi. It is an image of three resplendant beauties reposing, with some abandon, in a luxurious electric blue pool of water that glistens with energy and warmth. The scene is flooded with a spectacular array of sparkling colours that permeate through the saphire sea. Vibrant magenta and ruby red costumes, a luscious lime flare of fabric with delicate white and gold waterlilies. However, the rapture of these three carefree women, as they close their eyes in dream-like fashion, is fraught with danger. They remain oblivious to both the viewer and the inquisitive octopus, with its slender tentacles poised to entangle the equally slender legs of the unsuspecting woman to the top left. A second octopus lies in wait for the woman top right, while two jellyfish await their chance of attack if the octopus deigns to investigate further. The central bather in red is flanked by predacious sharks and one can see a shoal of fish as they disperse in every direction at the sight of them. Indeed, one fish, at the head of the woman, is open mouthed as if trying to warn of the dangers that lurk so closely. Rossano Maniscalchi has created a scene of opulence and serenity, which is also charged with energy and agitation at the fate of these three recombant bathers. He successfully demonstrates the fragility of this utopia, how the possibility of it descending rapidly into dark chasms of chaos and destruction lies only a whisper away. The viewer is left to either celebrate this glorious moment without further thought or to ponder their fate, to consider the feasibility that they may simply glide through the water unharmed, as some glide through life, blissfully unaware of what is going on around them.