The Conscious Eye photographic series developed from participation in the ‘Photography and meditation’ laboratory in 2015, held by the photographer Shobba Battaglia at the Triennale, Milan.
According to Eastern, but also Western tradition, the eye is the basis of all knowledge. The eye is the perceptual center of man and this initiates a meditation on the relationship between photographing and the practice of meditation. According to Zen masters, meditating is seeing things as they are. The camera, to some extent constitutes an extension of the eye, allowing an in-depth vision of things and being able to become a real “meditative eye”. The Photography and Meditation workshop is designed to experiment with Photography as a means of expressing a Zen language, an experiential exercise that leads one to live the practice of taking Photographs as a mental and spiritual exercise: recording suggestions, letting the organs and heart speak, achieving a deep perception. Photography makes you stop to observe, to acknowledge the extraordinary in everyday life, to celebrate the hic et nunc, the power of the present moment. In the act of photographing after meditation, an awareness of the self develops, giving rise to an abandonment of frustration, to the legitimization of every shadow and chiaroscuro, to the construction of a process of awareness capable of enhancing the female power. External noises, the moving body, the breath, the emotions, pleasure and pain, enclosed in an amalgam of energy, become a deep essence to remember in the shot.
