A selection of images from “The Missing Eye” by Italian photographers Mattia Parodi and Piergiorgio Sorgetti. Based in Milan and Bologna, respectively, Parodi and Sorgetti have collaborated on various projects and artist residencies, through which they have explored their interest in what they describe as “’psychic archeology’—material memory of forms in continuous mutation—as a process of interaction between the images that aim for confusing, denying and undoing the original meaning.”

“The Missing Eye” (Witty Books, 2021) considers the possibility that visual imagery may be independent of sight itself. Referencing recently published studies which have demonstrated that people blind since birth dream in images, Parodi and Sorgetti have imagined new ways of constructing images in which all senses participate in sight. “The gaze dissolves itself and the eye becomes a changing object of our perceptions, an abstract organ capable of processing images beyond retinal impulses,” they describe. “The photographic gesture captures the visual mechanism and transcends it, bringing attention to the typical transfigurative mental visions of the dream, sunk in memory and relegated to the unconscious.”

See more from “The Missing Eye” below!