ANIMAL/EYES - Annalaura di Luggo

[...] Annalaura is an unconventional figure, essentially impossible to pigeonhole. A businesswoman, waterski champion and sophisticated designer, tirelessly dedicated to charity and volunteer work, she has been engaged for some time now in a new iconographic investigation that bears an evocative title: Occh-IO/Eye-I. As a photographer, Annalaura moves within an unusual zone of artistic action, a realm very different from that of painters, who can create completely original forms, retrieved from memory or drawn from their imagination. Photographers, in contrast, can never completely elude the obligation to replicate the image of something that already exists, of which we already—naturally, one might say—possess an image (Caramiello, 1995, 47-49). Annalaura presents oversized images of something that indeed exists and has always been familiar to us: the eye. But this original creative act has unique implications that must be fathomed and revealed. The first has to do with the object on which she focuses her camera. What she is photographing is another sort of “camera,” a device that has been around on this planet for millions of years, in different versions. The eyes of an octopus, for example, like those of fish, are never irritated by seawater and structured so that retinal detachment (a frequent problem for humans) is almost impossible. Otherwise, they are fairly similar to our own. This is an idea that Annalaura has insightfully explored in her studies of animal eyes, starting with those of sea creatures, as in the beautiful Sea Visions, 7 punti di vista exhibition presented at the International Boat Show in Genoa. These seven visions, which for the artist implied different moments and angles of observation, interpretation, exploration and discovery, are capable of sparking the creative powers of the imagination. […]

Luigi Caramiello