I have not visited this place, I have not seen these houses, I have not met these people. I will say what I see in these photographs, in what they offer to my gaze and in the intention that constructs it through thoughtful direction. I will trust this vision, because it gives me confidence.

I do not perceive a search for originality at all costs in these images, nor the desire to find one’s own idea illustrated in them; this is why I have confidence, because I feel that the desire for understanding and closeness requires resources from form, even when it is so well studied and known, and it is not the desire for form – as often happens – that imposes itself on matter.

The stories of these people, the history of these homes, the reality exposed in these images does not assault the viewer (even though it is a ‘powerful’ story, a dramatic page in history) but emerges with quiet power and, I would add, with delicacy, from the composition. And so the gaze carves out its own path of reasoning, which, from the first impressions, all of careful intensity but also of objective concentration, finds its way to an incessant confrontation with some essential themes. The result is a deepening and, almost, a reversal of the usual judgements on some areas of reflection that have become commonplace today.

One of these is precariousness, the provisional nature of values and references, a dominant theme in defining the current ‘liquidity’ (to use Zygmunt Bauman’s apt notion) of our existence. We oppose this liquidity, which defines the sense of constant and unstoppable change in the reality in which we live and which determines the insecurity and dysphoria that are currently widespread, with symbols of protection, absolute value and durability. With mediocre results, palliatives that are soon unmasked. Thus, our homes are equipped with bars and alarms, devices in which so-called ‘comfort’ increasingly takes on the character of self-defence. Thus, we choose furniture based on the certainty of taste, durability – knowing full well that we are still complying with fashion – and originality, which should bear witness to our precise and unassailable personal identity. Yet, looking at these photos, something different comes to the fore. There is a durability that does not seek to impose itself on time or over time, but which offers itself as a place where time can linger. There is an essential intimacy that lifts the veil on our preconceived notions about the nature of domestic protection. An intimacy that protects itself, I dare say, the more subtle the shelter offered by precariousness and the stronger the need for closeness and sharing of a space removed from the unpredictability of events. These interiors are ‘home’, where we are not only allowed to cast a curious or evaluative glance, but where our gaze is invited to linger, to perceive a quality, a way of being.

These interiors are ‘home’ in a clearer and more essential way than any we can find in the images of publications or commercial shoots that promote domestic security and serenity, to which we unconsciously conform. There are lives that have this place as a refuge for their essential intimacy, there is no doubt about that. How elusive, how fragile all this is, and how powerful at the same time! For the same reason that leads even the most solid houses, when uninhabited, to rapid decay and sudden catastrophe (which seems mysterious even when reason explains it in every detail) these dwellings, examples of impermanence, show that it is not walls that ‘make a home’, nor the most perfect and comfortable technological innovations, but humanity that unfolds in everyday life, when it constructs the internal space of its own being in the world. With these observations, I do not mean to say that precariousness is defeated or cancelled out, but quite the opposite: in the most evident light of precariousness, the essence of intimacy and protection appears unmistakable, giving substance to a material dimension, but at the same time transcending it, to show, if there were any need (and today there is a great deal of need), that the quality of the material dimension derives from gestures and the sharing of life, and not vice versa.

Another reason for reflection, which comes from observing these photographs, also silently guided by their skilful direction, comes from the similarity of these forms of living with countless others scattered across the globe. While there is no doubt that these dwellings are contemporary, for those who look without being entirely absorbed by what they know about this story, they also have something timeless within their contemporaneity. They speak of a condition of contemporaneity, even more than the specific story they illustrate. They could be located in another country, or on another continent, and they would speak of the same dependence of the individual on the complex of social life, of the same struggle to conquer a space where one can ‘make a home’, which is still indispensable today in order to be part of humanity. Never before has a ‘home’ been less a reflection of tradition than the obvious result of a series of contributing factors that frame the social, political and economic reality of a territory. In this sense, the global similarity of these forms of living linked to the ‘misfortune’ of the cultural dimension becomes a sign of a wider and unrecognised global community of exclusion. I use the expression ‘misfortune’ in the cultural sense to highlight the complicity of society, politics and economics in the repeated occurrence of similar cases, where individual responsibility is not sufficient to explain a malaise that is much deeper and affects the liveability of an entire area. The feeling that these images could also come from another continent does not diminish their specific value as testimony; on the contrary, it broadens the opportunities to explore a fundamental aspect of our current way of life. Finally, I would like to add a few words about the suspension of drama, of the spirit of denunciation and other similar trappings that these photographs put into action. It is the result of a project that takes the time to experience, understand and rework, and which rejects any preconceived apparatus, even – and above all – on the decisive level of emotion. There is no trace of provocation, indignation or nostalgia (what use would they be? What would they add? How would they help us to understand?), but there is light that frames the construction of a vision. In this vision, we travel the closest possible approximation between the experience ‘from the outside’ and the experience ‘from the inside’, without ever cultivating the illusion that there can be identity, without ever thinking, however, that we have understood more, that we know more than others.