# 2
In the beginning was the name of a woman
According to myths, Europa was named after an Asian princess. Europa was abducted by Zeus, who had transformed himself into a bull, while she was picking flowers with her friends on the beaches of Tyre, a city in modern-day Lebanon. The animal carried her from Asia across the sea to Crete, where it married her. Her brother Cadmus came to Greece to look for her. He did not find her, but founded the city of Thebes instead.
AnonymousIn the beginning [Europe] was the name of a woman. The narrative of people, of things and ideas is always marked by the names given to them. So also the tale of Zeus´ love-stories with deceived, abducted, seduced princesses reveals in their names a remote key to understanding the present. The abduction of the Phoenician princess by the God, turned into a bull, is just a short episode in the tormented relationships of the civilizations born on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Myth illuminates history.
The myth calls them Io, Telefassa, Europa, Arianna, Fedra, Elena, kidnapped women, sometimes fugitives or looking for their beloved ones. All these women triggered the oscillations between Asia and Europe: at each oscillation a woman, and with her a crowd of predators, passed from one coast to the other; this is the story.
At an unspecified point in this age of oscillations, Europa — the daughter of the King of Tyre — begins a journey on the back of her kidnapper. Riding on a god in the form of a bull, she travels towards a wild and unnamed land on the other side.
The name of a woman. A tale made of names; of men overpowering women, overpowering other men. And also a tale of journeys across this sea surrounded by lands, exchanging goods and abductions, plundering and culture, something not yet resolved today.
Pietro Gaglianò, All’inizio dell’Europa (o verso la sua fine), 2016Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
What captured our attention
Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
Collections that include this source
Keep exploring
Moreover, I think that the women were called doves by the people of Dodona for the reason that they were Barbarians and because it seemed to them that they uttered voice like birds; but after a time (they say) the dove spoke with human voice, that is when the woman began to speak so that they could …
# 5
Doppiozero, Online Magazine: Unquoted Image
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.
A partial selection was made, isolating only part of the visible scene and thus altering the substance of the original image.
After “cutting out” this portion, a blank area remained on the canvas. That void was automatically filled using Photoshop’s AI-driven tool, which sampled the remaining visible elements to generate a new patch of imagery following a similar pattern.
Halftone Conversion: Finally, the modified image was transformed into a halftone layer—a print-inspired technique that uses a grid of small, varying dots to simulate continuous tones. Historically, halftone processes were crucial in newspaper and magazine production, enabling photographs to be reproduced using a pattern of ink dots rather than solid blocks of color or grayscale.
Remains and fragments, points of a lecture, pieces of reality, amounts of appearance: whenever we read an image, are we free to investigate its possible meaning and its relationship to a given reality? Things from a distance may appear differently.
This photograph, sourced from an online Italian magazine called Doppiozero, has been easily downloaded from the website and added to the collection Opacity of Images. Its original function was to illustrate an article about the death of migrants navigating the Mediterranean sea, but it remained uncredited and undescribed.
Invitations to contemplate
why did I collect this image
What if we see differently?
This image is part of the collection
This image is part of the collection Opacity of Images
Keep exploring
Well, where does the Danube has its origin?
It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.
An old woman who l …
