Ezio D’Agostino – 14.644

Ezio D’Agostino’s photographic research looks into the representation of the personal memory inside contemporary landscape.

Almost 20 years ago, I was flicking through my parent’s wedding photographs album. In one of the picture, there was a young man, smiling alone. I’ve never seen him before, so I asked my father about him. He told me: “This is Umberto, your cousin; a few years after the marriage, he decided to disappear”. Nobody knows what he did, and nobody knows where he could be today. We have just our “last Umberto’s picture”, smiling behind his 70’s glasses.

In 2010, I started the project 14.644.

14.644 is the number of people who have disappeared in Italy since 1975. Approximately 400 per year, more than one every day. Until now, none of them have been found. The reasons for the disappearance remain undetermined, but all of these cases fits one definition: voluntary estrangement. On any given day, at any given hour, anywhere, men or women decide to cut their ties with the past, with their social and family roles, with their image. Through the places where these people were last seen, my photographs wish recount the surpassing of this limit.

More images from 14.644 (an on going project) and other interesting projects on Ezio D’Agostino’s website.

Ezio D’Agostino is an italian photographer born in Vibo Valentia in 1979. He graduated in Archaeology at the University of Florence, he won a grant to study Documentary Photography at the Scuola Romana di Fotografia, attending photographic workshops with the photographers Andrew Phelps, Guy Tillim, Rob Hornstra (previously featured) and Donald Weber.
His photographs have been exhibited in the most important festival in Italy and abroad. Among the most representative exhibitions there are:
Le BAL – Paris; FotoGrafia – X° International Festival of Rome; ImageSingulières – Sète; 4th International FotoBook Festival – Kassel; Paris Photo 2009.