Domenico Matera is a very young photographer whose shots seem difficult to categorize. A few years ago, his project in the Lucanian badlands, A New Friend, immediately piqued our curiosity. At first glance, the photographs in this series appear to be a series of horse images. But there’s more. Matera – an engineering student who lives and studies in Potenza, Basilicata – doesn’t just take pictures; he aims to showcase his fascination with photography through specific philosophical concepts. Let’s see what it’s all about.
Starting with an apparently simple concept, the word being, Domenico Matera explains that the granting of this term «carries with it a sense of decay, oblivion, and unawareness. The brilliance of the beginning illuminates our understanding, but it does so by confronting us with our own negativity. What reveals this to us is the word itself—or rather, the misunderstanding of the word, which translates physis into ideas and the genetics of being into the realization of the body». But what do horses have to do with all this?
It is precisely through this project that Matera intends to «highlight how the sensory and visual language, born from an empathetic union with horses, does not distort reality through words but rather enhances the mystery of physis, expressing it through the infinite possibilities of natural being».
In philosophy, the concept of physis is nothing other than the essence of being itself, the foundation that allows beings to become observable and to remain so. It dwells in its own appearance and abides there. Moreover, «the lack of understanding of light often leads us to consider shadows as the most real. This condition, which immobilizes us in the darkness of shadows, prevents us from experiencing manifestations beyond what is immediately visible. It forces us to equate the infinite potential of being’s manifestation with the limited scope of what we perceive in the moment, confusing truth with shadows,» as the photographer explains.
Returning to the horses and Matera’s sensory connection with them, these animals have «offered him a tangible, unique, and authentic experience—something true and transparent». And all this in an era when bodily fulfillment is often suffocated by the falsehood of words. «My friendship with horses has allowed me to encounter an unfiltered truth,» the photographer concludes—presenting us with a genuine and powerful truth, just like the gaze of these fascinating and complex animals.
