Ombre sul muro (Shadow on the Wall) 1948

Mario De Biasi’s small photographic print captures a shadow on a wall, with the feet and ankles of someone sitting above. I imagine De Biasi with his camera, thinking about light and waiting for the perfect moment. The composition is spare. It's almost abstract, but the shoes, socks, and pants give it that grounding in reality. There is a certain beauty in the ordinary, something almost painterly in the crisp monochrome. It makes me think of the quiet moments in painting when I’m not sure what I'm doing. The shadows stretching across the wall become a metaphor, a way to explore feelings of uncertainty. What is solid and what is illusion? Maybe this is what De Biasi was thinking too? It reminds me that art is often about the unknown and it's about embracing ambiguity. It’s about letting the image emerge, and how a simple shadow can spark so many different ideas.