Michele Zaza

Michele Zaza (Molfetta, 1948) has never defined himself as a photographer - even though he mainly uses the photographic tool - but more as 'a thinker of images'.In a period, the seventies, characterised by an analytical attitude towards the structure of the artistic language, Zaza pursued one of the most interesting researches with his peculiar use of photography. Although his culture is strongly anchored to the Mediterranean world - his origins are from the south of Italy - the artist adopts an operative strategy in which every emotional or rhetorical overload is cancelled. In the name of a rigorous research whose basic foundation is the knowledge of philosophical discourse, the imaginary sequences of Zaza are constructed using recurrent symbols: the body - his own and his parents' - the earth, the stones, the stairs, the lightbulbs, clocks and bread. These are essential elements that convey the artist's meditative need to investigate the profound meaning of life, whose only possibility of being unveiled is the recourse to primary forces, especially that of the human figure deprived of any cultural overload.