LUCA ROTONDO
Lares

"Lares" is an ongoing project about the relationship with the death of pets. I've met several families who decided to keep in their homes the body of the animal they loved, embalmed, in the form of a skeleton, or in formalin.
What may seem an anomaly is a more widespread practice; and it responds to a deep emotional and relational lack.
Taxidermy for the common imagination is mainly linked to hunting, trophies, museum exhibitions; the same people I met thought their were isolated and rare cases. Instead the journeys I made around Italy, in rich or modest homes, between young people, families with children or singles, are revealing a more transversal needing.
"Lares" refers to the statues of the spirits of ancestors, protectors, according to Roman civilization, of home and family. Like those statues, even dead animals are preserved in places of daily life. And it is there, in a living room, in the kitchen, or in the office, that I wanted to set the family portraits.
Caption in infofile

Author
Luca Rotondo (Milan, 1989) began to practice photography actively in 2013, when, with the book "Ipotesi di Paesaggio", he graduated from IED, the school where he teaches "Landscape Documentation" since 2016.
In 2015, after being awarded with the Ponchielli award, he began to collaborate with several national and foreign magazines (among the main ones: Stern, Die Zeit, Sunday Times, GEO, Esquire, D Repubblica, L'Espresso, Panorama, Io Donna, Wallpaper, Elle Decor, The world of interiors).
My work often focuses on themes related to territory, landscape and their relationship to humans. My interest ranges between different topics following the current of what piques my curiosity. I find photography to be a way to know, to archive, to order the world, and at the same time an excuse to delve into subjects that I find interesting. In my everyday life I am a collector, of objects, of stories, I like to archive things and with them memories, it's a way to save them.

Website
http://www.lucarotondo.com/

Instagram
@loocaround

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