LEV FAZIO

Famulus

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After coming to New York, I realized how this city, home to more than 8 million people, is not other than a melting pot of individuals coming from all over the world, and I thought how I’m not the only one who finds this place strange and distant, even though for a lot of people this place is home. My goal with this project is to document the way people interact with their surrounding, how the way we build the space around us, and the object present in that space shape the way we interact with each other, how we unconsciously establish a sense of “familiar”. Looking at things present in our lives every day, like benches, home, grass, trees, and everything we take for granted, could model in our minds an unconscious feeling, sparking every kind of emotion. If we only focus on that particular object for more than just a glance, we look closely we could feel a different kind of interaction, and focus on how different objects present in our world could have a deeper meaning for us other than the common use. Why a photo of a crying baby, a person running, something that employs motion, and not a static scene resonates a deeper meaning than a simple object found on the side of the street, a slow and impalpable motion, something more subtle. I think that both two ways of looking are equally important, both are giving something to think about, the first one usually it’s more about the story surrounding the photos, what has caused that movement, timing, why that frame on not the other; and on the other hand the second type of approach is more connected I think to what we can get just by observing at a more static scene for a longer time, with everything in focus, eyes going everywhere throughout the image, looking at it as a whole, and what this observing the scene could spark in the mind of the viewer, how each viewer could relate to that scene on a personal level, driven by his personal experience and culture.

As I’m trying to convey a sense of home in the place I’m living right now, I’m trying to do it by capturing the space as I usually see things. New York is culturally different from the place that I come from, and it’s interesting how something that could be strange for me, something that I could find exotic, for someone else could be just normal, and vice versa. I’m looking for the viewer to ask himself question on the importance of the reality surrounding himself, and how without noticing the way we live our spaces at the same time is affecting the way we communicate and interact with each other. By looking and photographing the ready-mades, the art pieces around us, the everyday object, could this change also their value. Object, structures, and spaces by themselves are meaningless and stupid, we are the one giving them purpose, dictated by the way we interact with them, driven by what we perceive as reality, and our own experience. This is all an unconscious process, the “dunamis”. Two states, one where we just observe, the other where we proceed to act, and the combination of object and the force we act upon it is the full realization of the object itself in the way we usually perceive it.
The all project is aiming to reflect about the state of things, how we communicate with other people by shaping the space around us, intentionally or unintentionally, what is this telling to use, how it’s affecting the way we interact with the world and how everyone’s relation to it is different. After all, we are always looking for a home, for something familiar, everywhere we are going.

Lev Fazio (b. 1995, Saint Petersburg) is a photographer based between New York and Italy. After graduating from Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, from 2018 to 2019 he attended the International Center of Photography in New York. During his almost 6 years in the industry he had the chance to showcase his work in multiples festivals like Forum Italia, Les Rencontres de la Photographie’ (Arles, 2016), ‘Fotografia Europea, OFF section’ (Reggio Emilia, 2016), ‘SIFEST’ (Savignano sul Rubicone, 2016), ‘Funzilla Festival’ (Rome, 2017), ‘Slideluck’ (Prato, 2017), and featured in several publications (YET Magazine, ID, The New Republic, among others) and shows.

Copyright © Lev Fazio, all rights reserved

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