Italian art director and graphic designer Enrico Zordan initially adopted analog photography as a way to escape the sordid reality of our days.
It soon became more than that—it became a way to express and pay tribute to the faulty, the mistaken, and the imperfect. To the blemished. Specializing for more than five years in Polaroid photography, Zordan documents reality’s shortcomings by breathing new life into them. He states, “Many of my works arise from expired films, from an error […] or from the physical readjustment of the support to bring it to new life, always maintaining that poetic and vintage warmth that the instant shot can transmit.”
The beauty of his work lies in the unexpected storyline aligning within the frame of an instant shot, reminiscent of the frenzied work of a writer having to first write a chapter and then read it to see what their characters have been doing. Simply put, he perfectly captures the stories of an imperfect reality hidden within our own.
Zordan’s work is all about the metaphysical and unapparent. His works look like memorabilia that a time-traveler could bring from an adventure or a memento that a “Bladerunner” character keeps in his desk drawer. All of the photos capture something familiar and yet strangely uncanny.
The use of the Polaroid technique brings vintage and futuristic qualities in equal parts. There is nostalgia for something comforting that is not yet lost forever but difficult to recapture. There is an anxiety for what is to come once we make it through the Huxleyan scenarios.
The artist captures the feeling that we are missing something essential, some significant layer of reality, an element that can be explored only through art. That is why we need unconventional lenses. As the photographer puts it: “Because we need to uncover what lies behind this fog.” Zordan is a storyteller. Through his series and diptychs, he explores the passage of time, limits of perception, and fragmentation of consciousness.
Read our “Aberration” issue in full
The 31 artists featured in RAWGUE. Magazine’s 5th issue stray from the expected, taking untrodden paths, contemplating imperfection, solitude in its many forms, and the ongoing process of self-acceptance. Through shifting perspectives, their works explore what it means to look at oneself from the outside, as if through broken glass.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
