West of Here
2020-2021

At first glance West of Here looks like a classical photographic survey of Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of the many great photographers who worked in that city. But with a closer look, the work reveals more. All the images comes in fact from Grand Theft Auto V, a video game set in Los Santos, an “open world” scenario that closely resembles Los Angeles and its surroundings.

Thus, the city of the Studios, of Hollywood and film industry, becomes itself a staged set and a virtual replica, a duplicate of its original. But in the end, Los Santos looks more like a remembrance than a copy. It is immediately familiar and recognizable, but at the same time vaguely odd and ambiguous. Pieces are missing, distances are altered, dimensions changed.

Instead of photographing directly “in-game” though, the pictures are intentionally collected from the web – from numerous screenshots, wallpapers and videos originally taken by different players around the world. This process serves to shed a further light on the ubiquitous proliferation of image-making, whilst creating a single narrative out of a “collective memory” of a place that doesn’t exist. Indeed, is it possible to photograph such a place? And what does it mean to do so? What light are we writing with?

While exploring the possibilities and the meanings of photographing a virtual place, the work addresses further issues, such as the truthfulness of photography and our belief in this medium as a trace of reality. Collected from the web, edited, cropped and turned to black and white by the author, the images loose their virtual evidence and blur the distinction between false and real.