PHOTO BOOKS: HALLUCINATIONS BY TIM DAVIS
What does it feel like to see your land portrayed through an external perspective?
In this new article, I’ll talk about a book I helped with as a production assistant: Hallucinations by Tim Davis.
After The Photo Solstice #4, I was tasked with traveling around Sardinia with the American photographer Tim Davis. We drove nearly 2,700 kilometers across an island that measures just 100 by 400 kilometers. Two weeks of exploration in search of a new, contemporary, and seemingly hallucinatory vision of Sardinia today. A vision free of any folkloric or iconic preconceptions. This journey resulted in Hallucinations.
Published in December 2022 by Punctum Press, commissioned by the Fondazione di Sardegna, the book measures 20.5 cm x 30 cm with a softcover. It contains 152 pages and 132 color photographs printed on Garda Glass paper and Siro Paglierino. The project was curated by Marco Delogu and Flavio Scollo, who also contributed to one of the texts. The book also features writings by Elisa Medde and Tim Davis himself.
After a week at Photosolstice in Gavoi, in central Sardinia, where I worked both in production and managing the press office as a photographer, we immediately set off on our journey. The mission was not simple: explore the island in search of hallucinations. Tim and I, in my old Fiat Punto, ventured through the narrow roads of Barbagia, explored the Campidano up to Cagliari, then made our way back north through Nurra and Gallura. It was the end of June 2021, and we saw all kinds of things.
From the cover, it's clear that this is no ordinary story. This particular photograph was taken in Bosa, on the Cane Malu cliffs. An apparently headless man floats in the emerald waters of the island's west coast.
In this book, the author doesn’t offer us a geographical or temporal reconstruction of our journey, but instead opens the door to a collective hallucination, masterfully depicting today's Sardinia without preconceptions or unnecessary folklore.
Throughout the book, we encounter both images that stand alone and micronarratives—two or more photos interacting with each other, like the verses of a poem.
An excellent reading insight comes from the texts included in the book, such as the one by Marco Delogu and Flavio Scollo: “Tim is never banal; his approach to photography is a visual discourse in constant evolution, always questioning and exploiting the limits of the medium.
His works are often infused with subtle irony that actively stimulates the viewer in a playful narrative.”
Tim himself provides the motivation behind his approach: “It’s part of the nature of the camera to believe completely in whatever is placed before it. Everything it sees is a hallucination, which overwrites and surpasses everything that came before it.”
With these words, Tim Davis sums up the entire philosophy behind his photographic research, both in terms of language and technical approach.
Last but not least, Elisa Medde, former editorial director of Foam Magazine, shares her thoughts: “Tim Davis’s books are visual poems, his photography is about observation and redemption, a constant search for the poetry in the mundane and the ordinary. He faced a land wearing a sardonic mask. The roads, drunken yet eternally thirsty, and its landscapes infused with a soft, timeless color. Pieces held together by nylon string. A faint scent of jimsonweed.”
This is not a typical monograph; this is a journey into the complex reality of today, disguised as a hallucination. The tale of the everyday becomes history for future generations, raw and alive.
That's all for this article. Remember that you can find the book for sale on the Punctum Press website.
For the full video on Hallucinations, visit my YouTube channel.
