Breathtaking: plastic that kills in the photos of Fabrizio Ferri on display in Milan

Plastic suffocate the face of Susan Sarandon. The straws with which we drink the drinks pierces the face of Isabella Rossellini. A adhesive makes it silent Willem Dafoe forcing it to silence. These are only three of the images they make up Breathtaking The installation conceived and created by the Italian photographer Fabrizio Ferriuntil April 27th at Museum of Natural History of Milan To frame the problem of the devastating effect that plastics and microplastics have on our oceans. «But this is not a complaint – explains the photographer – it is not a way to identify some guilty and blame them. It is more than anything else a way to say that we are all guilty of the situation in which we find ourselves because we did nothing».

Twelve faces and a coffin to tell the oceans we are losing

A Great glass coffin containing sea water, symbol of the oceans that we are inexorably losing, is located right in the center of Twelve great images Trafette from nails and exhibited on a black wall that portray as many cinematographic faces: Misty Copeland, Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Gala Gonzalez, Julianne Moore, Bridget Moynahan, Carolyn Murphy, Isabella Rossellini, Susan Sarandon, Naomi Watts, Helena Christensen. «When my daughter Emma showed me the photo of a dolphin and a whale killed by plastic and asked me what I could do, we went to collect the plastics vomited by the sea and we brought them to the photographic studio. Then I contacted the faces that could interpret that last breath of the animal killed by plastic ».

“What can you do?”

From that “What can you do?” Therefore, the idea of ​​the installation promoted by the Municipality of Milan-culture was born, produced in New York by Geraldina Polverelli Ferri and Milan from Natural History Museum And as a noble agency. In Ferri, a prestigious protagonist of Italian artistic photography, many responded, with impetus and sharing of intent. «I asked international talents and the members were spontaneous and very motivated – continues Ferri – but I was very amazed that the only man giving his availability was Willem Dafoe. All the other men asked have refused with embarrassing apologies ». Yet, the close correlation between the pollution of the seas and the lethal consequences for our lifethey are a common problem, as the photographer who says: “It is true that we are killing the ocean and his life but we are killing ourselves”.

Marina Abramovich’s contribution

The conceptual artist also contributed to the installation, which after Milan will travel the world in several appointments Marina Abramovich. She is responsible for the intuition of the need to recreate the absence of sound of the silence of the abysses through the use of soundproofing headphones. The setting, with the darkness of the exhibition room, the deafening silence that refers to the marine abysses, the distressing images of literally asphyxiated faces due to plastic, evokes the loss of breath to which it alludes the title of the installation. The breath that is missing from the thousands of animals that drown every day in our seas.