Unmistakably enamoured of the most livid and tangible traits of human beings, Barbara Di Maio has been rewiring the perception mainstream audience has been holding about the scope of photography along our evolutionary journey. Brilliantly imbued with drama and romance, restlessly obsessed amid discomfort and resurrection, Di Maio has enriched and extended the meaning of photography to a psychological extent very few managed to even envisage. A quest for redemption, an omnivorous famine to absorb and dissect anything in front of the lens, Barbara Di Maio has been granted a disturbing gift which is to reveal the subject and their inner fears, unbeknown to themselves. Apparently casted into a Pasolinean atmosphere, Barbara encompasses the religion pulsion alongside with the ancestral tradition of her native south Italy; like a bleeding wound that never heals, so is the intensity of the research and satisfaction she eagerly aims to present in her portraits, always diffusing a sense of unaccomplished analysis where the harmonious balance of lights and proportions might be the fine result of something staged or AI-originated at the very best. Di Maio’s eyes are venomous inquisitors capable to extort the weakness and desire anyone is holding onto; no one is perhaps much safe from her camera which like a psychotherapy session, makes the subject able to declare their animosity, their ambiguity towards the surrounding. A gruesome introspection born from affliction and hope, her photography is a factor of dwindling power that turns into soothing depth upon reaching the eyes of the beholder. Barbara’s corpus of works spans from the sacrality of the Italian traditions till the most contemporary and frivolous scene of a joyful and rough Naples; throughout such diversified array of subjects, she still remains firm and crude into stealing the vibrations and echoes exudating from individuals. Different skies, distorted lights, newly found faces and still Di Maio manages to enlighten us, to bring us further and beyond the matter, signalling the presence of some energetic string all souls are attached to at a different length and strength. Her artworks are an invitation to humanity, to embrace its most amorphous imperfections, eliciting an unexpected sense of belonging we have long time lost. In Di Maio’s hands there is no space for the tailored mediocrity which modern beauty standards are imbued with. Wrinkles, lights and shadows, allies disheartened by the time, Barbara is plastering our reality with untamed sense of magic and immortality, we are sitting at the childhood of humanity, the photography never looked so powerfully healing and blessed, the loss does not become frustration but indeed a new hint for an outshining resurrection ready to come.
