Steve Panariti

Over the past decade Steve Panariti has traveled the world, capturing models for big brands and, at the same time, documenting the real life “behind the scenes”. With the polaroid and the film he photographed what happens behind the camera: gestures, suspended and fatigued glances of models surprised in moments of relaxation, of unsuspecting cleaners and simple passers-by that convey, everyone, a sense of discomfort and restlessness.
Diamonds is an experiment in which the “out of focus” takes shape, neither imagined nor imaged, but harshly real and ultimately central.
It is a present-day jigsaw puzzle filled with nameless inhabitants of peripheral spaces, empty architecture and withdrawing lights the day’s end.
“We’ll never be as young as we are tonight,” echoed Buster Casey. Every night we forgo a sliver of our purity, and give up a grain of our audacity.
The photographs reveal the same idea found in the unwholesome pose of the adolescent, in those who have passed out and sleep on the streets.
The frailty of essence reveals our defective side, the shameless side, the side capable of dirtying itself since it is often closer to the ground: the unlikable side, that we seek to hide is there, but cannot be illuminated.
This part wants no responsibility. It ponders other, deeper thoughts: lingering in the instability that nears the authenticity of life. And thus, we become strong, stronger than we ever thought.