The metaphor of man as an inverted tree, with its roots in the sky and its branches reaching towards the earth, is present in many cultures and religions, in literature and in philosophy.
Dante uses it in Purgatory to represent spiritual ascension and purification of the soul, where heaven sustains earthly life.
Platone uses the same image in Timaeus to portray human beings who, spiritually, aim for the “heaven of ideas” and the pure forms of the intelligible world, but whose realisation is confined to the sensible world, through earthly experiences.
Finally Carl Gustav Jung uses it in the process of individuation: the integration between the unconscious (roots in the sky) and the conscious (branches towards the earth), which leads to the completeness of the Self, a vertical journey between two worlds.
This series of portraits invites a change of perspective, a reversal of the gaze with the idea of conveying a sense of evanescence, fusion between man and the sky.
With the help of long exposure and distortion of proportions by placing the camera on the ground, I made people move in space to create bodies that dance in the sky, bodies that evolve and transform. Celestial plants.
