# 1
Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.
Operations: Extraction and Collection. Image alteration: none.
This is an original image from the long-term documentary archive Ius Soli, which explores the archaeology of the present in the Mount Vesuvius Red Zone. The so-called Red Zone encompasses 25 municipalities and could potentially transform into a vast archaeological site in the event of an eruption. The image is a digital file printed on transparent plexiglass.
Tessuto non tessuto is a black fabric used in archaeology to demarcate and protect archaeological ruins after excavation for preventive purposes. The particular tessuto non tessuto in this photograph punctuates the soils of Mount Vesuvius’s so-called Red Zone, around the towns of the inland cities home to small clothing industries. Dumps of manufacturing remains are illegally left all over the soil to avoid the normal waste treatment process. The stratification of industrial waste treatment issues is depicted in its first layer.
Invitations to contemplate
This image is part of the collection
Keep exploring
- But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, wh …
Opacity of Images
This quote has been selected as part of one of the Alterlibrary collections, titled Opacity of Images.
The opacity of images that could have a documentary purpose. Images sediment fragments of reality, individual and collective points of view, and cultural values. How do we read them?
Opacity is generally understood as the quality of being impenetrable or resistant to full comprehension—something we can’t see through entirely. In the context of images, the Opacity of Images refers to the notion that photographs, illustrations, or visual materials are never completely transparent conveyors of meaning or truth. Instead, they contain layers of interpretation, cultural baggage, and subjective viewpoints that render them partially inscrutable. This opacity prompts us to question not only what we see but also how we see—and whose perspectives are shaping the act of looking.
of our Imagination
