Driving in my car I came across this hummer limo, inside there were two newly weds, with a classic entourage of family and friends.
From what I saw I could deduce that things are and will go like this:

he works in a company which is the leader in the assembling taps industry
She doesn’t work
He has a tribal tattoo on his calf, and he wants to get another one
She has two tattoos, a japanese one on her wrist which says “universal brotherhood” and a tribal one on her lower back. And she wants to get a third one
He has a polished light grey suit and the sleeves get to his fingers, a bit chubby and has a cravat. He’s dying of heat. The hair gel reveals his receding hairline
She has a white wedding dress, with a terrific hair and make up with little pearls in her hair.
They will go on a honey moon in mauritius. At the airport she will buy a gossip magazine and the last book by fabio volo. He will buy the sport news paper. It will rain all the time and they’ll want to leave immediately but will have to wait. She will want to get laid by the . He will want to get with the mauritian waitress. Nobody will do anybody. They will tell everyone they had so much fun
They will have a son and name him kevin
Years, summers and winters will go by
They will have a daughter and will name her cristal
He’ll get fatter and loose his hair
She’ll get fatter
Kevin will flunk twice at the professional college
Cristal will be doing marketing at college unwillingly
Thanks to the parish priest of the town where her grandparents are from she will be hired as a secretary
Kevin will go work in the company which is the leader in assembling taps industry
They won’t have enough money to maintain the whole family, and their grandparents will maintain them
Years and decades will go buy without any of them realising
He’ll die of an heart attack at 53
She will live up to 87 years old, bored and lonely

All of this is already predicted, couldn’t they be avoiding all this drama, poor things and, simply, enjoy life?

Final epilogue of my show AMNIOS, created more or less a month ago.
During it we also filmed a backstage which tells you how the installation was made at the gallery.
I am going to do again a quick epilogue for who wasn’t here or got lost along the way:
Nine photographs of a model that moves from darkness to light, placed in a room darkened by black sheets and in the dark. The guests where given a torch before entering to shine on my photographs, thus making them walk along the path of the model and at the same time the path of my photography, which reality itself is made to change from darkness to light.

Amongst other things I recently found out something which I really didn’t know: catholic churches are built most of the time towards west, in such a way that who enters goes through the darkness of the world (the west) to the light of the alter (the east). (excuse me for coming through as iconoclast…)

In short everything wanted to be also and above all a discourse on photography itself.
Trying to make the spectators interact and, in some ways, even them PHOTOGRAPHERS.

It therefore seemed to me only right to take a little portrait (created by my assistant giorgio serinelli) of everyone that has not only seen but made it possible for my exhibition to be seen.
In two days 360 people came to see the exhibition
Which you can see above here or better here

http://disk.benedusi.it/amnios_ritratti/ritratti.jpg

Honestly I do not know if there is still spage to sign up, but my workshop in tuscany begins in a week!
http://www.tpw.it/2009/benedusi/benedusi_set.htm

Maybe some things happen only to me, or maybe, with my constant curiosity, I see things that maybe seem normal to others.
It’s been a while, here in milan, when I receive a fine (which doesn’t happen often, but it happens) they arrive in a large envelope with many sheets, I find a particular thing: the large envelope contains a postal bulletin to pay, the case record, a few more pages… and a white page with written “PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY WHITE”

Everything though happens for a reason, and if I am the only one to notice this thing that I have never read anywhere else before, there must be evidently a reason..

I strongly feel empathic towards this page.
All this time at work, this going from one part of the world to the other (I’ll tell you this story quick: the fraud division from american express called and asked me: “pardon me mister benedusi, we have noticed that in the last two months you have been here, here and here and here and here and here and here and here.. And the automatic alarm has been activated because it doesn’t seem possible that you could have made all these trips, do you confirm it was you? “I confirm”), this waking up and not knowing where I am, this having my head in a thousand different balls.. Well.. All this writes on my forehead only one phrase:
PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY WHITE

big size here http://disk.benedusi.it/man_woman/344H9827_big.jpg

As I returned from zanzibar I left again for portugal, to photograph yet another editorial.
It often happens that I wake up somewhere and I have no clue of where I am.

The editorial shot during these days had been created in a surreal place, in an old pyrite mine.
Pure industrial archeology, extremely fascinating from many angles.

In this “location”, as us cool fashion people call it, I set my story, a love story between a man and a woman.
A story, saying it at least for once in a photographic technique, where I obstinately looked for error.
I therefore looked in all the ways to get light to enter the shutter of my canon, to smear the picture as much as I could.
I find that looking for error, a mistake, breaking the rules is very constructive: getting off the righteous path you can loose yourself, but you can also find things which you didn’t even know you wanted, and love them.
Too many times I find that photographers use instruments to “adjust” reality, to give order to what uncommonly has order: I think it’s best, that sometimes, you get pulled into chaos to end up looking into reality straight in the face.

And the reality of this editorial during these days is a slightly antonioni story (excuse my presumption) of a man and a woman, chasing each other, running away, maybe in love, maybe looking for themselves, but maybe finding something else.

“So many days we spent, after the wind running
Asking for one kiss, yet longing for one hundred,
One day or another they’ll come to your mind,
You once fled away, you’ll come back again,
One day or another they’ll come to your mind,
You once fled away, you’ll come back again.

And you, with your eyes of a different colour,
You, who do tell me love words in the same way
One month, one year will pass, and you will not stay,
You who tell me I love you, from me you’ll flee away,
One month, one year will pass, and you will not stay,
You who tell me I love you, from me you’ll flee away.

You came with the sun; on cold shores you did freeze
I lost you in November or with a summer breeze,
I have never lov’d you, I’ll love you for ay,
O love ever coming, you’ll ever go away,
I have never lov’d you, I’ll love you for ay,
O love ever coming, you’ll ever go away.”

Fabrizio De Andrè

Last post dedicated to zanzibar.
As always, when a job ends, I see the place with the eyes of a tourist and not anymore with the ones of the worker: every time I am surprise on how suddenly I see things in a completely different way.

Confronting the tourist argument, I have to admit that I really liked zanzibar, and I would gladly come back (which I know already, it will never happen…)
So I would like to give a tourist suggestion, on where to stay if you’ll ever come here.
When: the right months are from August to October.

Where: I give you some different options

- are you in your twenties, you like to have a beer in front of the fire when the sun goes down together with boys and girls from all over the world, on a beautiful beach where you’ll swim marvelously? Then go to kwenda rock, where I took this photograph above here. A room will cost you around 12 dollars http://www.kendwarocks.com/

are you in your thirties, you want to stay in a place without spending too much, on the sea front, with a beautiful infinite pool, staying in a designer hotel? Then go to the Z hotel

- are you in your forties or more, are you cool and you are looking for and want the best? Then go to the kalindi hotel: absolutely beautiful http://www.kilindi.com/

I am practically at the end of these days of shooting.
I would like to say one thing, about the food.
Maybe it has been understood already, but for me eating is a very important thing, for the taste of it and also to immerse myself in the culture of a population.
I was reading not too long ago that the fact that us being omnivorous is what developed our human intelligence in relation to animals: the animal species that eat only one kind of food (the koalas that eat only eucalyptus leaves) are less intelligent than the animals that have more variety in their diet and are in their way less intelligent than us humans that eat anything: the possibility to choose imposes risks, that impose a huge selection capacity. I didn’t make up all this I have recently read them in the book “the omnivore’s dilemma” by michale pollan, which I strongly suggest to read.

Although all this human intelligence evidently went to fuck itself in the resort where I was these days
In zanzibar: beautiful place where I had a really good time, but talking about food…

I am going to say one thing, which I will only say once. But you aren’t many and you won’t tell anyone, right?
Ok, I am going to say it.
1, 2, 3…
Take a deep breath…
Ok, I’ll say it: for ten days I had dinner every night eating pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce.
Ok, I said it.
Pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce in zanzibar!
There really wasn’t anything else to eat.

So here is the joke that I tell everyone every night and to which they all laugh out loud and they think that I am joking but it is the truth: I cannot wait to go back to italy to stop eating pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce…

I am still here, in zanzibar shooting.
In this moment I am in the lobby of the resort, fighting with an angry swarm of mosquitoes.
It seems to be the norm around here.
I am only going to tell you that just now I asked if they had an anti mosquito spray to lend me, to add it to the one I sprayed earlier, and the people at the reception handed over to me a huge baygon spray can!
Kind of like the ones you use to eliminate roaches!
And for them it is pretty normal to spray it on their skin to repel mosquitoes…

And talking about mosquitoes, at the end, when I was already here and maybe even too late for it, I decided to take the malaria pills.
Pills with a little reassuring name: “malarone”
They didn’t give me nausea, as they say it sometimes happen, but a generic light headed.
Or maybe it is given by all this sun, or the wind, or the job, or from the malaria that has already set in. Or from all the above…

Talking about the previous posts, on the italian colonization of the island of zanzibar, I invite you to watch the backstage video we made for the magazine “il corriere” http://video.corriere.it/?vxSiteId=404a0ad6-6216-4e10-abfe-f4f6959487fd&vxChannel=Spettacoli&vxClipId=2524_5cea63e8-67e3-11de-8836-00144f02aabc&vxBitrate=300
I feel the ending is really entertaining…