Eterno notturno (2020) translates into images a popular Salento legend that was passed down to me orally during my childhood. The “Laùro,” a mischievous house spirit or gnome, roams inhabited homes at night and settles on the stomachs of sleeping people, taking their breath away; and if the chosen house has a horse, the spirit braids the horse’s mane or tail into inextricable plaits. The plaits must not be undone, on pain of the animal’s death.

All the images in the series are characterized by a continuous contrast aimed, on the one hand, at creating the theatrical atmosphere of a folkloric narrative, and on the other, at maintaining a constant ambiguity between the real and the dreamlike, the tangible and the mysterious, truth and mythology.