31st December 1997

31 Dicembre (31st December) is a deeply personal, autobiographical series first published in 2011 in Mario Giacomelli. Sotto la pelle del reale. The photographs were taken on the afternoon of December 31, 1997, as Giacomelli waited for a masked party to begin.

In this series, silence dominates as Giacomelli plays with his shadow projected onto a cracked wall. Textures feel almost tangible, and shadows seem more real than reality, yet everything unfolds like a dream. Memories resurface and imprint themselves onto the photographic film, evoking a sense of lingering possibility.

The series serves as a ritual of purification. Using his “poetic companions” (the dogs and artificial birds that often appear in his later work), Giacomelli stages an encounter with his unconscious. From the mid-1990s onward, his photography increasingly explored this interior journey, giving rise to interconnected series such as Cremonini, Autoritratti (Self-Portraits), Bucci, Ricordi di un ragazzo del ‘25 (Memories of a Boy from 1925), Questo ricordo lo vorrei raccontare (I’d Like to Tell You About This Memory), and La domenica prima (The Sunday Before). In these works, the absence of human figures—replaced by his “poetic companions”—transforms each photograph into an open-air theatre steeped in silence.

(Adapted from Katiuscia Biondi’s text)