Damiano Nava likes to use the camera as a diary. After moving to Berlin, in November 2009, he found it hard to spontaneously meet people of his generation who might be interested in being photographed. He didn’t speak German, and it was hard for him to establish the kind of intimate relationship required for the project. “I was like someone having problems finding a soulmate, so it seemed like a natural step to turn to the internet”, he writes in his introduction. He wrote an ad and posted it on Craigslist and Exberliner. For about two years, the ad generated new contacts. Nava received about a thousand e-mails, met around a hundred people and took pictures of the few who were comfortable with him.

 

This book gathers these photos, together with a selection of the emails he received, and an “Afterword” by Italian art critic and curator Guido Bartorelli. According to Bartorelli, ” Nava’s work has roots both in art history and in today’s all-pervasive photography craze”, and is original in “his ability to represent, to encapsulate this form of collective – or generational – creativity” without giving up with a traditional, much debated task of photography: that of providing “a trace or impression of reality”, here completed by the emails, themselves used as “traces, fetish objects”. The result is a faithful portrait of a generation, with its narcissism and its peculiar relationship with traveling, communication, body language and image making.

 

 

Let the Right One In is an artist book by Damiano Nava and the fourth issue in the series “In My Computer”, published by Link Editions. At the Link Point, the project will be presented in a special setup including both Damiano Nava’s photos and a selection of emails from the book.

 

 

Damiano Nava (Brescia 1982 – http://damianonava.com) lives and works in Brescia and Berlin. After completing his studies at the University of Bologna (2007), he started working as a professional photographer and an artist. Solo exhibitions include MJU (2009) and Closeness (2007), both curated by Guido Bartorelli at Perugi artecontemporanea, Padua, Italy. Group exhibitions include: Amateurs (2011), Padua, Italy; Settemilamiglialontano (2010), Brescia, Italy; Il Pittore e il pesce (2008), Venice, Italy; Premio D.A.M.S. (2004), Bologna, Italy. His work has been featured in books and magazines, including Flash Art, Vice, Exibart.