Emanuele Vitale: Seeing Beyond – Discoveries | MONOVISIONS

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2025

A discovery destined to revolutionize the world, in 1954, thanks to Giulio Natta, found the definitive consecration with the discovery of “Moplen” (polyethylene). A material that will enter into daily life and revolutionize each of us’ s customs and habits thanks also to the economic boom that will characterize the 50/60/70 years. The plastic, commonly called will have an increasingly widespread diffusion and uses then unthinkable. What looked like a revolutionary discovery in the 1950s turned 70 into an environmental issue. Through my goal I want to tell about today’s drama related to plastics and the pollution that derives from it. Plastic is obtained from a dark black substance, oil; only during the production process is it transformed into a semi-finished product rich in color, a process to make a product more attractive and fashionable. My work restarts from that black, from that color that expresses all the drama of what I saw through my lens. Plastic envelops our environment, in some areas of the planet you just have to dive into the sea to find yourself surrounded by this indestructible material, my story begins with a simple dive, an immersion in a world full of plastic, what at the beginning was to be a leisure turns into a dramatic experience. The plastic wraps the face, submerges it, the astonished gaze, the desperate eyes that mingle with the caps themselves, there is no more division between us and the plastic. We are submerged, pervaded by it. Once immersed we find ourselves enveloped, wrapped in submerged layers that prevent movement and are a negation of the freedom dictated by our seas. A desperate scream, of pain, a scream of terror because the material that was supposed to simplify life actually turned into denial of life itself. In the end, a desperate, pleading hand tries to be an alarm signal, a cry for help to seek a lifeline, but in the end the brutality of the face which is abandoned lifelessly among the residues of plastic material. A raw, direct path that exacerbates the brutality and difficulty of living in a destroyed environment. My goal is to transform my work into a complaint that wants to stimulate a new rebirth, in the hope that that hand that begs for help can re-emerge in a better world….

‘Seeing Beyond – Discoveries’ was the Black & White Conceptual Series of the Year 2nd place Winner in the MonoVisions Photography Awards 2020.