In one of the quiet back rooms of the Villa Farnesina, I came across a corner where every layer that had ever existed on the walls was in the process of being stripped away — wallpaper, paint, plaster, all of it peeling back simultaneously, as though the building itself was being asked to shed everything it had accumulated and return to something more honest. I pointed my lens upward into the corner where the two walls met, drawn in by the darkness of it, the depth of it, the way the colors that emerged from underneath were so unexpected. What the stripping revealed was rich and moody — deep reds and burgundies showing through in patterns and designs, the layers beneath the surface bearing a warmth that the finished walls above them never had. It reminded me not of ruin but of anatomy, the inner workings of the building's body made suddenly visible, its circulatory system exposed — intimate and vital, the way a body is when you see beneath its skin. This is what buildings hold inside themselves, underneath all the careful finishing. Not emptiness. Something alive, something that has been there all along, waiting to be seen. This piece is part of Bright Ruin (2025), my series of over 45 unique works shot entirely on analog film over the course of 10 days in Rome, and first exhibited at Gallery ATARAH in September 2025.
