Antonio Santoro is an Italian director, actor, and author whose work has always been governed by the idea of storytelling
After years of directing, creative writing, and ghostwriting, Santoro ultimately turned to seeking stories via photography and audiovisual media.
In his visual work, Santoro adopts the investigative approach of an apprentice surgeon in search of how a heart works. He uses highly contrasted black-and-white scenery, contorted bodies, and inanimate objects to piece together the missing links between his own personal experiences and why they occur, between meaning and the unknown.
In the series titled ‘Shaping the Darkness,’ the visual artist utilizes his keen storytelling drive to practically philosophize, raising the unanswered questions asked by the ancients for millennia: what is the meaning of self, and what is the meaning of everything surrounding us?
He does not particularly aim to find an answer; that would be presumptuous and arrogant. He merely opens an avenue for discussion, for dialogue, and, more often than not, for monologue. Shaping the darkness means forming ideas in the primordial soup of our minds, materializing concepts that could eventually lead to choices and principles. As he says, it is about “bridging the gap between us and understanding that we all inhabit a single, fragile planet.”
Visceral, distorted portraits of people surrounded by nature and photographs of raw materials both channel similar organic energy. Just like chiseling of stone gives it shape and utilitarian or creative purpose, movement gives people a chance to experience and shed emotions to uncover their true form and intention.
Santoro brings forth the idea that the energy between opposites doesn’t have to be grim and destructive. By facing the same trials and questions as our ancestors, we can connect with their strength through the rediscovery of primal bonds. If anything is “set in stone,” it is the fact that nothing stays the same.
Artist’s Note:
“These photos belong to a project called ‘Shaping the Darkness’ that combines performance and photography to explore the vast territory of the unconscious, dreams, and archetypes.
Since the dawn of humanity, we have questioned the meaning of our existence in the world, finding it in a dance of opposites where death and rebirth, day and night, dream and reality, and attraction and masculine and feminine are the opposite but complementary poles that govern our existence.
Everything flows, as Heraclitus says, and everything undergoes a transformation, a metamorphosis whereby one form changes into another, in a process of continuous redefinition and interpretation of reality.
Navigating this semantic universe, we are immersed in woods and ancient ruins, searching for a liminal place between dream and reality, where the camera dances in unison with the performers to capture those moments of transparency in which the truth of a thought or emotion or the dynamics of an action reveal their most authentic nature.”
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
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.
