Making photographs as a way of “feeling at home without being at home.” That’s how Gabriele Rossi describes the process that led to The Lizard, his new monograph with Deadbeat Club. Rossi first visited the United States in 2016 to prepare for a six-month residency that was based in New York City. He initially felt overwhelmed by the metropolis and its rhythm, which was completely unlike that of his home village on the coast of Italy.
“I looked for the edge of the city, went to the shore at Rockaway, the houses, anything that could remind me of where I’m from,” Rossi says. This approach drove him to consider his definition of “home” – the place where he could ultimately feel comfortable – and to return to the U.S. twice more to explore this compulsion across more than ten states in the Midwest and West. At the same time, he was interested in responding as an outsider to the structures of classic American photography, like that of Robert Adams.
When the pandemic interrupted further travel, Rossi set about thinking through the pictures that he had amassed, trying to find common forms and themes – the connections that built the story about his being away from home. His effort was to understand why he was making the pictures, and not just to present a lot of pictures "about" America. As a result, The Lizard is a strange and uncanny atlas of the familiar transformed into the unfamiliar through the vision of a stranger who's only looking for some sort of home.
Interview by Dana Stirling
First, tell us a little about your first experience with photography? What made you want to be a photographer?
When I was very young, around the age of ten, I used to collect photos of my family. I wasn't the one taking the photographs; rather, I would put them together and create stories. I remember enjoying this a lot, and I carry it with me as a beautiful memory. I believe this early experience with photography instilled in me the awareness that life is made of time, and to manage it, we need some sort of tools to understand its passage. At the age of 26, I began taking photographs to pass the time, without any particular reason. After a year, I found myself in an academy studying to become a professional photographer, and from that day on, I never stopped.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "feeling at home without being at home" and how this concept influenced your work in The Lizard?
In this sentence, distance and memories play a fundamental role. For me, photography has never been a tool to tell a story, or even if it has, it has always happened through a sideways thought, not directly related to what was represented. During the period when I started taking photographs for The Lizard, the intentions were still not clear; there was only the need to photograph as a therapeutic act, that is, to collect images that, through their forms, reminded me of the concept of home. Not the place where I came from, but an imaginary place where I could feel calm and at ease.
How did your initial feelings of being overwhelmed by the rhythm of New York City contrast with your experience in your home village in Italy, and how did this contrast shape your approach to photography and to this project in particular?
I believe I hinted at an answer in the previous question; however, I don't think there can be a true contrast between the two experiences, which I consider decidedly separate. Life in my city is very slow and peaceful, or at least that's how I perceive it. The city is located on a plain between the mountains and the sea. New York City is the exact opposite: chaotic, noisy, and always in a hurry. I also believe that I brought with me to America the way I've always interpreted my surroundings through photography. There have certainly been references; I would be lying if I admitted otherwise.
You mentioned returning to the U.S. multiple times to explore different states in the Midwest and West. What drew you to these regions specifically, and how did they inform your understanding of the concept of “home”?
As I have mentioned before, places did not have specific importance; I simply took cues, for example from the Mason Dixon line, only to stray and retrieve information from whatever seemed familiar and comforting to me. This is a book that, in a certain way, also deals with concepts such as love, sweetness, and harmony: it is not a critique of the American landscape, but rather a study through which to understand the changing capabilities of perception and how it guides us and adjusts the distances between us and thin
Robert Adams seems to be an important person when you talk about this project and your work, and I can see why as your work seems to have been inspired by him both conceptually but also aesthetically. Can you tell us about this connection and what compels you about Robert Adams approach to photography. Did this also motivate your decision to utilize black and white photography in The Lizard?
Before addressing the question, it is necessary to make a preamble: the United States for me represented a destination that I reached through the teachings of great Italian photographers such as Gabriele Basilico and Giovanni Chiaramonte. These two great European masters contributed to the formation of a movement that shaped multiple generations of photographers through dialogue and dissemination. They provided me with the necessary tools to build a critical consciousness regarding everything revolving around photography. The entire European culture served as a necessary engine for me to calibrate and shape my idea of photography. Robert Adams is certainly a reference point for American photography, as were Timothy O’Sullivan and Carleton Watkins even before him. I believe that the strongest connection with these great masters is the concept of time conveyed in their images.
The aesthetic aspect played a very marginal role, as I believe it should, otherwise, we would all be doing the same things, which we know wouldn't make sense. Black and white photography is part of a maturation process that began with the release of my first book, ITACA, a project that collected color images from my photographic archive spanning about 10 years. I took all my projects realized up to that moment and exploded them, creating a large atlas with no reference. All of this stemmed from the need to reinterpret my vision, working in a completely different way on images previously made for another purpose. Subsequently, I took these reborn images in a new book and started printing them as photocopies with a xerox machine in black and white, depriving them of their nature as color photographs. I gradually began to refine my gaze, reducing it to the essential, and in this way, monochrome became part of my language.
Could you elaborate on some of the common themes or motifs that emerged in your photographs, and how they contribute to the overall narrative of seeking home in unfamiliar places?
Around halfway through the work, when there wasn't yet an idea for a book, I had grouped the images under the name "Everything’s Unfamiliar," precisely because those recurring themes served as a compass that allowed me to navigate through a territory I barely knew and gradually learned to understand.
How do you hope viewers will engage with and interpret The Lizard, and what do you ultimately aim to convey through your collection of images and the narrative they create?
Allowing people to open the book and make their own thoughts. The book is a large atlas both in form and content, precisely for this reason, the observer will have the opportunity to move within it as they see fit: there is no chronology in the spaces, they apparently don't tell anything. The purpose of this book is also to involve people in images sometimes recognizable and sometimes completely anonymous: this contrast will guide every observer on an extremely personal journey.
In what ways did your understanding of "home" evolve throughout the three-year period documented in The Lizard, and how did this evolution shape the narrative of your work?
As I mentioned earlier, the definition of "home" is something that has nothing to do with my origins or nostalgia for home. Speaking about the concept of home, in the US is really difficult and fragile at the same time: during my trip across the States, my mind blow a lot because everything I saw seemed to me really temporary, nothing had the shape of a thing being there from years, at least houses with a kind of form of life in it or a trailer lost in the wood that pass over and vanish the idea of home as a place to live. In 2016, I took a trip that served as a reconnaissance mission to understand where I would spend almost a year of my life the following year: I was forced to consider those places as my home. When I returned at the end of 2017, I began to realize that I didn't have the tools to quickly adjust to the rhythms of New York City, so I started to reflect on what would make me feel better. One of these elements was my relationship with water, particularly the sea. Before I started taking photographs, I spent a lot of time in Rockaway looking east towards the ocean, towards the horizon. This ritual gave me the opportunity to reset my mind and start orienting myself in a territory of which I knew nothing. From that moment on, it was as if I already knew something about those places; all the readings I had done before. Authors like Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace contributed to enrich part of my narrative.
Can you walk us through the process of creating The Lizard as a monograph with Deadbeat Club, from the selection of photographs to the design and layout of the book, and how did this process contribute to shaping the final presentation of your work?
I met Clint and Alex from Deadbeat Club for the first time in Rome during the launch of one of their incoming titles. After a couple of months we met again in Arles in 2022, and it's right there that I showed my work to the guys for the first time. I had a dummy with me, not very different from the final version. The dimensions of the book were exactly the same as the published version, and it's the only thing that hasn't changed. Together with Clint, we did a very intense editing, cutting out a significant number of images to arrive at a much more compact and essential sequence. The design, on the other hand, was entirely done by Clint. The cover was printed in half-tone offset metallic silver on special dyed Japanese art paper.
What has been some of the best advice / feedback / critique you've received that you feel really pushed you forward and that stuck with you and your work?
When I started working on the mock-up of the book, I still didn't know where all that effort would lead. During this period, I engaged with only a few people whom I truly trust, the kind of people who don't just pat you on the back and say "well done," but those who provide constructive criticism that ensures your work progresses and doesn't stagnate, stimulating your mind to think and implement reasoning. There weren't specific pieces of advice that pushed me forward, but rather an ongoing dialogue.
