Five figures seated at a Roman bus stop, and one, already exiting at the far right, occupy the frame of this photograph. A large advertisement looms behind them, bearing an outstretched silver hand and the slogan Fai la tua scelta (“Make your choice”). The gesture hovers above the woman in the center, who leans heavily on her cane, her eyes closed in resignation. To her side, a man smoking a cigarette stares forward with defiant detachment, while the woman at the far left, dressed in black, appears to track the passerby with a cool, appraising glance, almost addressing the figure fleeing the scene.
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Five figures seated at a Roman bus stop, and one, already exiting at the far right, occupy the frame of this photograph. A large advertisement looms behind them, bearing an outstretched silver hand and the slogan Fai la tua scelta (“Make your choice”). The gesture hovers above the woman in the center, who leans heavily on her cane, her eyes closed in resignation. To her side, a man smoking a cigarette stares forward with defiant detachment, while the woman at the far left, dressed in black, appears to track the passerby with a cool, appraising glance, almost addressing the figure fleeing the scene.
Ragazzini’s lens captures the layered interplay of observation and disconnection, passivity and judgment, at the heart of urban life. The raised hand, an icon of supposed agency, becomes a silent accuser or a futile command. Or, more fittingly, it becomes a gesture of distress, like the hand of someone slipping beneath the surface, transformed in Ragazzini’s composition into an allegory for the weary collective despair of those seated below. The figures form a frieze of psychological estrangement, each locked in a private narrative yet brought together by chance.
Echoing the frank clarity of German New Objectivity artists, Ragazzini’s etched textures heighten this dissonance. The composition evokes the ironic layering of photomontage, exposing a civic stage where choice is more illusion than possibility.
In Waiting for Godot, Enzo Ragazzini reveals the quiet dramas of urban life, where public spaces become stages of fatigue, isolation, and longing. Turning his lens on people waiting in Rome, he captures the collision between real bodies and glossy fantasies; moments where individuals remain disconnected beneath advertisements promising beauty, success, and a life just out of reach.
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