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Virtual Wanderlust

Virtual Wanderlust: Landscapes from Another World

In recent years, virtual tourism has become much more than a hobby: it has evolved into a true artistic movement. Traveling within video games isn't just about playing—it's about observing, capturing, and reinterpreting.

This is a collection of painterly images born during my digital journeys—shots transformed to evoke the beauty of impressionist and post-impressionist brushstrokes.

Each image you see here was captured inside digital worlds—landscapes that don't exist in real life, yet manage to convey real emotion. Through a combination of artistic filters, manual texturization, and carefully chosen color grading, I've turned these screenshots into digital canvases. The painterly effect is designed to recreate light, atmosphere, and depth.

From the endless calm of a flower-filled field to the melancholy of autumn ruins, from the grandeur of a digital cliffside to the cold lights of a futuristic metropolis—these scenes are windows into alternative worlds, but also mirrors of our own inner landscapes.

Welcome to my virtual travels. Where reality ends, imagination begins.

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20 Pieces. 20 Universes. 1 Look to Wreck ‘Em All.

Art’s a quantum virus.

One look and the atoms split, the cells morph, reality faceplants into its own reflection. The observer fucks with the observed. Every. Single. Time.

You got 20 pieces in front of you. Paintings, photos, portraits, landscapes, mindfucks. Fake shit that looks real. Real shit that looks fake. The difference? Your messed-up brain. The glitch between chaos and your so-called "truth." An oil painting screams louder than a photo. A photo lies harder than a hallucination. Step closer, a face shifts. Move an inch, the sunset ghosts. You only see what you’re wired to see.

Here’s the punchline: every piece is an experiment. And you? You’re the wild-ass variable. The test subject. The lab rat. The executioner.

Now, play the game. Look at ’em all. Then blink. Tell me what you remember.

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The museum of carefully curated illusions.

Welcome to the museum of carefully curated illusions."

Every image, pulled from the cluttered landfill that is my social media, is another ticket to the sideshow freak act I call a life.

Moments that pretend to be carefully selected but were really just dragged up from the emotional basement where all the messy stuff gets shoved. The box labeled "Do not open: contents may cause existential dread."

These aren’t pictures. They’re confessions wearing makeup. Each one shouting, "Notice me! Just enough to hurt."

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Shrouds of the Soul

Shrouds of the Soul:

Women, Color, and the Sacredness of Existence.

In this series of works, Andrea Bigiarini takes us on a journey filled with mysticism and introspection, exploring human essence, spirituality, and the fleeting beauty of existence.

Each portrait is an ode to femininity, a silent invocation of the intrinsic sacredness of life itself. The women depicted in these works stand as archetypes of strength and vulnerability, immersed in an atmosphere suspended between decay and rebirth. Their tattered garments symbolize the weight of suffering and time, while the vibrant colors on their faces represent traces of spiritual transformation, evoking resilience and hope. They are not passive victims of their circumstances but individuals who maintain inner strength and unyielding dignity despite adversity.

This bold and provocative artistic choice offers a powerful reflection on the human condition, our society, and the experiences of marginalized and forgotten women. The subjects' faces, marked with colors like traces of a sacred ritual, reflect the complexity of human emotions and the search for a deeper connection with the divine.

Through the interplay of forms and symbols, the artist presents us with an unconventional vision of femininity, understood not as an imposed or traditional role but as an act of free and authentic expression that reflects the sacredness of existence itself.

The works in the "Shrouds of the Soul" series invite us to explore the mystery of the human soul and to celebrate the sacredness of existence in all its imperfection.

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A brighter Future

Remember the 60es?

A decade when the future shone with possibilities and dreams realized. Technology was a promise to improve the life of the everyday person, not a weapon in the hands of corporations.

A future of flying cars and robots serving families, where innovation meant freedom and more time for ourselves.

"A Brighter Future" celebrates that vision. An era when we believed every home would have a robot to ease the burden of daily chores, technology designed with empathy to enhance quality of life. Optimism was the most valuable currency, and science was the driving force toward a better tomorrow.

The 60s gave us the imagination to dream big: floating cities, space travel for everyone, a life of comfort and progress. Inventions were meant to serve people, not profits. It was an era of bold hopes and new energies, of a future that excited and inspired.

"A Brighter Future" brings back that dream: a bright future where progress meant empowerment, not dependence. Look at these images and let yourself be inspired: rediscover the energy and hope of a better, brighter tomorrow, made for everyone. It's time to take back control of our future.

After all, being a Boomer like me is like having a superpower that never fades: seeing the future get clearer and clearer.

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Surrealistic Junkies

Imagine staring at your inner distortion, reflected in a world that screams.

Surrealism is the mirror that shows how tired, twisted, almost happy we are in our disorder. Here are your images: a haunting gallery of postmodern freak show, where everything is so absurd you almost want to embrace the ridiculous.

These characters are more than just figures: they're both guilty and victimized, spectators and actors in a circus that devours itself. A woman with weary eyes, surrounded by painted faces and marionette-like bodies. Juxtapositions that speak to how trapped we are in societal roles, whether we want them or not. If there’s any meaning, it’s that there isn’t a true one; the art lies in showing we are fragments with no final puzzle.

The second set of stiff faces: bureaucrats of desolation, guardians of existential graveyards wearing sashes of authority that hold no weight, no roots, no purpose. Palahniuk would’ve called it a grotesque procession, the funeral of human expectations, where everyone marches with the obsessive grin of those who know they’ve already lost.

And the final triptych of women with perfect hair and vacant gazes: fallen queens of postcard aesthetics. Their makeup is both mask and war paint, beauty and exhaustion. Each face is a reminder that perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a collection of high-fashion ghosts, stuck halfway between tragedy and a fetish for an elegance that has long abandoned us.

These are your "Surrealistic Junkies," souls immortalized in their little, ugly spectacle. Palahniuk would’ve said you’re not just looking at images: you’re looking at yourself, and spoiler, there’s no happy ending. There’s only the raw truth that, maybe, we kind of enjoy sinking into the chaos.

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Confessions of an AI Art Hoarder"

So here's the deal: I’ve made tens of thousands of images with Stable Diffusion, Fooocus, and ComfyUI.

Tens. Of. Thousands. And where are they? Rotting on my hard drives like digital roadkill.

Every time I thought, ‘This is the last batch,’ but nope, one more round, one more dopamine hit from watching the AI spit out something half-decent. Because when you’re messing with AI, you get this god complex mixed with a feeling of being completely at its mercy.

And then what? I left them there. Tens of thousands of AI-generated masterpieces—well, maybe not masterpieces—just sitting, collecting digital dust. It's like hoarding, but without the cockroaches. I’d stare at my screen, thinking, ‘Who the hell is ever going to see all this crap?’ It became my little dirty secret.

So I did what any guilt-ridden hoarder would do: I picked a few. Just a few. I’m not trying to save the world here. Mother Teresa of digital art, I am not. I grabbed the ones that made me laugh, or at least didn’t make me cringe. The rest? Let them rot. I don’t have time to care.

Now they’re out there, ready to be seen. Or ignored. I honestly don’t give a damn. Beauty in the age of AI is whatever the next algorithm tells you it is. Scroll. Don’t scroll. Doesn’t change my life.

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Images of killer robots? Yeah, sure, real scary stuff.

Forget those sleek, futuristic monsters you expect.

These things look like they just crawled out of a junkyard. Rusty, rundown, bolts barely holding on, parts missing. Forget about high-tech, cutting-edge machines. These robots are imperfection in motion, a walking disaster with a gun in its hand. They're unhinged, falling apart, ready to cause damage with all the grace of an old beat-up car trying to race a Ferrari.

And yet, here they are, programmed to do the one thing they’re built for: kill. Doesn’t matter if they look like they're about to explode any second. Doesn’t matter if they’re limping along, squeaking like they're seconds from collapsing. They keep going. A shot here, a shot there, and who cares if they lose a few pieces along the way? There’s nothing high-tech about these things. They’re broken, psychotic, the shabbiest and most dangerous version of progress.

It’s like someone took an old washing machine, slapped a shotgun on it, and said, “Go wreak some havoc.” Perfect for the job, right? But you know what the real nightmare is? They are exactly what we deserve. A future where efficiency doesn’t even matter anymore, where technology is just a rickety nightmare chasing you with a wrench in its hand.

These robots don’t shine, they don’t impress, they don’t even look real. But they’re dangerous, because they’re the reflection of everything we’ve done. A failure wrapped in rusted metal, shooting without a second thought. And as you look at these shambling wrecks, you’ve got to wonder: whose bright idea was it to let us get massacred by a heap of deranged, malfunctioning scrap metal?

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Irrational Geographic

Welcome to Irrational Geographic, the landscape series that reveals the absurdity of the world we live in.

You won’t find perfect mountains or pristine beaches fit for a glossy magazine here. Instead, these are scenes of everyday madness, dressed up as natural beauty.

This isn’t the Earth you see in travel brochures. This is the planet as it really is: a place where nature’s lost the manual, and humans decided to mess with whatever was still working.

In the first photo, there’s a waterfall. Or no, wait—it’s a factory disguised as a waterfall, vomiting rainbow-colored sludge into a dead river. They call it a “marvel of human ingenuity,” like polluting with style is something to be proud of. But hey, at least the Instagram filter makes it look poetic.

Then there’s that concrete desert. There used to be trees. Now there are roundabouts. Nature abhors a vacuum, they say. But asphalt? Asphalt loves one.

And finally, the inevitable beach shot. Except there’s no sand. Just glass, broken bottles, and a few old memories of a summer gone wrong. The ocean’s still there, but don’t get too close. It might show you a truth you’re not ready to handle: it’s all just a façade, a fragile set piece that crumbles the moment you try to touch it.

So here’s Irrational Geographic, your travel guide to a world that, on second thought, isn’t really all that tourist-friendly. Or maybe it is, depending on how willing you are to keep your eyes shut. And as you take in the view, remember: the real show is always backstage, in the cracks no one wants to see.

Oh, and one more thing: I’m not even sure about these descriptions. Maybe these photos are from completely different places. But really, who cares? We’ve never been good at telling reality from fiction anyway.

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In a seedy motel.

In a seedy motel,

the kind of place where hope gets lost between polyester sheets and walls as thin as paper, couples come and go like actors in a puppet show that writes itself.

No script. No plot. Just the raw, visceral reality.

Couples arrive with wrinkled smiles, hands clasped, promises whispered like secrets that no one should hear. But the walls, oh, those walls have ears. What happens in those rooms is never just sex. It’s the collapse of misplaced dreams, the weight of unspoken lies, the reckoning with a reality no one wants to face.

They say there are more ghosts than guests in a seedy motel. Lost souls of relationships long dead, leaving behind only traces of hidden tears in the mattress and shattered hopes in the constant hum of a broken fan. Couples come and go, but no one ever really leaves. They leave pieces of themselves behind, like empty shells the cleaning staff deliberately ignore because even they know some burdens can’t be swept away with a vacuum.

And then there are the marks. Scratches on the furniture, footprints of anger on the carpet, smudges of lipstick on the mirror that tell stories no one wants to hear. Every room is a battlefield, a monument to human error, a dirty little shrine to sacrifices made on the altar of dissatisfaction.

In the end, the seedy motel is a confessional for sins that never get confessed. It’s not a refuge; it’s a trap. A place where people go to discover that escape is never really possible, that no matter where you go, you’ll always bring yourself along. And when the door clicks shut behind you, with that dull thud that sends shivers down your spine, you realize the real prison isn’t the room—it’s the invisible tether that drags you back there, night after night, searching for something you’ll never find.

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Alien Flowers: Because Earth’s Flora Wasn’t Enough.

Welcome to the cosmos, where even the flora has a better sense of adventure than the majority of us.

I've just unleashed a gallery of intergalactic flora onto this unsuspecting planet, and boy, do these alien flowers look like they belong in a sci-fi horror flick rather than a garden center.

Take a gander at these otherworldly blooms that are far too extravagant for mere Earthly taste. Forget daisies and roses—those are for the unimaginative masses who think a bouquet is the pinnacle of romance. These alien flowers are the kind of bouquet that would make a Martian think twice before even touching them. They’ve got all the subtleness of a neon sign and none of the charm.

You see, each petal on these extraterrestrial specimens looks like it was borrowed from a bad acid trip. Their colors are less “pastel” and more “violent hallucination,” because who needs soothing tones when you can have a color palette that screams, “I dare you to look away”?

And the shapes—oh, the shapes! They’re not just shapes; they’re defiant declarations of horticultural anarchy. They twist and curl like they’ve been drinking too much space wine. If you ever wondered what a black hole would look like if it had a garden party, these flowers are your answer.

Now, let’s talk about the scent—or should I say, the lack thereof. These blooms are not here to please your olfactory senses. If Earth flowers could be classified as soft, romantic whispers, these alien flowers are more like a full-on, in-your-face shout. If you’re lucky, the only thing they’ll do is give you an existential crisis.

But here’s the kicker: these alien flowers are a reminder that even in the vast, uncaring universe, someone—somewhere—has a sense of humor. So, if you’re tired of the same old, same old, step into the cosmic garden of my imagination. These are not your garden-variety flowers; these are the flowers that will make you question your sanity and maybe even your taste in floral arrangements.

So, go ahead—be bold. Embrace the bizarre. Because why settle for Earth when you can have a piece of the universe that’ll make you question everything you thought you knew about beauty?

Enjoy the show. Or don’t. It’s not like these flowers are here to win a popularity contest.

#AlienFlowers #IntergalacticBotany #DareToBeDifferent

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Schrödinger’s Suburbia. A short story.

In a town where every house was a perfect copy of the next, Tim Jenkins prepared to live yet another day identical to the last.

The smooth, unblemished white walls of his home reflected the existential void that defined his life. Every morning, he woke up in the same queen-sized bed with sheets he didn’t remember buying, in a house he didn’t recall choosing, next to a wife who... well, might or might not exist. Just like Schrödinger’s cat, Lisa Jenkins was simultaneously present and absent in a marriage teetering between stability and total collapse.

Quantum physics would have a lot to say about Tim. According to theory, there was a probability, however infinitesimal, that a single subatomic particle could appear out of nowhere and blow up the entire neighborhood. Or it could just decide not to exist. Much like Tim’s will to live. But of course, no one really thought about that because people who lived in neighborhoods like this never really thought. If the observer alters the observed, then Tim was living proof that there wasn’t much to observe in the first place.

As the coffee slowly dripped into his cup—the one with "World’s Best Dad" written on it that he didn’t remember ever buying—Tim wondered if the universe was just screwing with him. The idea that particles could exist in superimposed states, that time was a jagged line rather than a straight one, and that his choices didn’t mean a damn thing in the grand scheme of things didn’t comfort him at all. In fact, it pissed him off. If the universe wanted him to believe he had any control over his life, it was doing a piss-poor job.

The philosopher in Tim’s mind—who, to be honest, was more of a narcissist than a deep thinker—began to ponder free will. If the universe was truly indeterminate, if every choice he made was just an illusion, then why the hell did he bother making those choices? You could say Tim was living in a quantum loop where every day was a repeat of the last, and every decision he made was just a fraction of a fraction of a probability.

Why not just screw it all? Why not flip a coin, let probability decide? But as always, Tim ended up choosing the path of least resistance. It was the conformist's paradox: aware of the trap he was caught in, yet too scared to shake it off. Schrödinger’s thought experiments and Zeno’s paradoxes were his daily bread, but in the end, they only served to reinforce his inertia. Like an electron unable to decide which orbit to choose, Tim oscillated between "doing something" and "letting things stay the same."

And so, with his perfectly orchestrated daily routine, Tim left the house, got into his black sedan (the same black sedan that every other Tim Jenkins in every other parallel universe was driving), and headed to work. His mind wandered over concepts of multiverses, of lives not lived, of possibilities never explored. But of course, he did nothing about it. After all, who observes a particle without changing themselves too? Tim Jenkins was evidently not that kind of particle.

And the neighborhood continued to exist, unless someone somewhere decided to look at it too closely. But who would ever bother to observe something so irrelevant so closely? And so, Tim Jenkins’s life, just like that subatomic particle, remained in a state of superposition—between existing and not existing, between making a choice and just letting life happen.

Until someone finally opened that damned box.

But who exactly would have the guts to do it? Certainly not Tim Jenkins, who lived trapped in his routine like a hamster on a wheel. The box stayed shut, the cat potentially dead, potentially alive, and Tim, well, potentially free, potentially a slave.

As he drove to work, a bizarre thought crossed his mind like a glitch in the matrix of his monotony. What if all this was an experiment, a twisted test orchestrated by some higher entity? Maybe God—or worse, a quantum physicist—having fun seeing how long Tim could endure the nothingness before imploding. If it really was an experiment, Tim thought, then there had to be an observer somewhere, someone recording his every move, every non-choice, and silently laughing at his inability to break out of his own box.

“Fuck it all,” Tim thought, not even really believing it himself. It was a rebellious thought, a mental act of insubordination that he would never have the courage to put into practice. Because even in his fake disdain, Tim knew he wasn’t going to do anything different. He would park the car in the usual spot, walk to his cubicle, and spend eight hours typing meaningless data into a system no one would ever really check. Then he would drive back home, have dinner with Lisa in awkward silence, and fall asleep thinking about the thousand possibilities he would never have the courage to explore.

And yet that persistent thought, that nagging doubt that maybe, just maybe, there was something else outside this box, kept buzzing in his head. Maybe if he just stopped playing the conformist, stopped acting like an electron unable to decide which orbit to choose, he’d finally find the guts to open the box. But not today. Today he’d do exactly what he did every day: absolutely nothing.

The morning traffic was, as always, an orderly flow of identical cars, each driven by another version of Tim Jenkins. The other drivers were just shadows, reflections of his own banality, indistinct figures gliding through the city like neutrinos through matter. Invisible. Insignificant.

His thoughts returned to quantum physics. Particles that exist only when observed, that behave predictably—until they don’t. But Tim wasn’t a particle, and no one was observing him—at least not in any way that mattered. Maybe that was his real problem: there was no one watching. Nothing giving weight or meaning to his existence. In a world where every atom was monitored, where every possibility was calculated, Tim Jenkins was the exception. An unobserved man. A quantum error in an ordered universe.

What if he just stopped doing what everyone expected? What if he ditched everything, drove toward the horizon, and kept driving until the gas or the earth ran out? But he knew he wouldn’t. He’d go back home to Lisa, to their box. The box he’d keep shut because opening it meant facing the reality that maybe there had never been anything inside.

He arrived at the office, parked the car, and turned off the engine. He sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, eyes fixed straight ahead. “Not today,” he thought again, but this time there was a hint of defiance, a small glimmer of rebellion.

Maybe tomorrow he’d open that box.

Or maybe not.

Because really, who would notice?

Like an old rusty mechanism that suddenly started working again, creaking and groaning.

“Fuck it all,” he said out loud this time. The words echoed in the empty parking lot, a sound that felt more real than anything he’d ever said before. For the first time in years, he felt the truth of those words. No one was watching him, no one was controlling him, and maybe—just maybe—that meant he could do anything.

Tim turned and started walking—but not toward the office. He kept walking, past the parking lot, across the street, with no clear direction. The world around him seemed to blur, and for a moment, Tim felt like he was the only real thing in a universe of shadows. Traffic whizzed by him, but he didn’t even notice. The city that had held him captive for so long was dissolving, revealing a horizon he had never dared to imagine.

With each step, Tim felt lighter, as if he was shedding weight, but not just physical. It was as if he was unloading his baggage of expectations, fears, and compromises. The box that had trapped his existence was finally opening, and inside, there was neither a live cat nor a dead one, but a void that seemed infinitely full of possibilities.

He didn’t know where he was going, but for the first time, he didn’t care. The world stretched out before him, a blank slate on which he could finally write something of his own. Every step took him further from the old life, from false choices, from compromises. It was as if he was daring the universe itself to stop him, to prove that there really was a destiny, a path already laid out.

But the universe remained silent. No invisible hand pulled him back, no force stopped him. And as he walked further and further away, Tim realized that maybe the only person who ever had the power to observe him, to change him, was himself.

He walked until the sun began to set, painting the sky with colors he had never noticed before. In that moment, with the sun dipping below the horizon and the cool air filling his lungs, Tim Jenkins finally felt free. Free from everything he had been, free to be anyone he wanted.

And so, without a plan, without a map, Tim Jenkins left his old life behind and disappeared into the twilight—a particle finally in motion, determined to create his own destiny, to draw his own orbit. Maybe the universe would take note of him, maybe not. But Tim no longer needed to be observed to exist. Finally, he was no longer a suspended possibility—he was real.

And for the first time, the world seemed to make sense.

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Yellow, Loud, and Proud

Yellow, Loud, and Proud:

Motorcycles for the Stylishly Doomed

Imagine the world has gone to hell—again.

The sky is burnt orange, the asphalt is cracked, and the only thing cutting through the silence is the roar of a motorcycle. But not just any motorcycle. These beasts are retro-futuristic machines, designed by someone who clearly spent too much time watching 'Blade Runner' and listening to Daft Punk. And they’re all yellow. The kind of yellow that makes you think of hazard signs and toxic waste.

The kind of yellow that screams, "Look at me, I’m too cool to be subtle."

You’ve got to wonder: why yellow? It’s not like anyone in a dystopian wasteland needs to worry about visibility. Maybe it's some twisted joke, a reminder of a time when people cared about safety, or maybe it’s just that whoever designed these things wanted to make sure that even when civilization collapses, you’ll still look like you’re riding the result of a Minion’s one-night stand with a Tron bike. The irony, of course, is that in a world where everything else has faded to gray, yellow becomes the new black.

These bikes are a designer’s wet dream and a survivalist’s worst nightmare.

They’ve got all the sleek lines and unnecessary curves of a machine built for people who don’t know the first thing about torque. They’re not just motorcycles; they’re statements. Statements that say, "I’m here to look good, even if I’m the only one left to see it." And while they may be built for speed, let’s be honest, they’re really built for Instagram. Because nothing says, "I’m the last badass on Earth," like posing next to a banana-colored speed demon.

But that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? In a world where everyone’s fighting just to stay alive, you choose to ride a yellow motorcycle. Not because it’s practical, not because it’s smart, but because it’s the ultimate middle finger to the apocalypse. It’s saying, "I’m still here, and I’m still going to make an entrance."

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Collodion Magic Without the Mess

"The collodion photographic process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, involves coating a glass or metal plate with collodion, sensitizing it with silver nitrate, and exposing it while still wet. The plate is then developed and fixed immediately using sodium thiosulfate or potassium cyanide. This rapid process, requiring a portable darkroom, yields high-resolution images with fine detail and a unique, ethereal quality."  -- The Collodion Process

Imagine the collodion process, but now you’re doing it digitally—because who has time for a portable darkroom and chemicals that sound like they could melt your face off? Here’s how it goes:

Step one: You take your sleek, overpriced smartphone—because, of course, we’re all photographers now—and slap on a filter that makes your image look like it was dipped in vintage nostalgia and regret. The digital ether and alcohol mix right on your screen, without the stink or the mess.

Step two: Snap a shot of your subject—probably your cat, because cats don’t complain about how they look in photos. Watch as your screen turns that pristine image into something that looks like it’s been dragged through time, kicking and screaming.

Step three: Hit that develop button, which, in reality, is just a fancy way of saying, “Let the app do its magic.” Watch as it creates an image that’s part haunting Victorian portrait, part modern-day selfie nightmare.

Step four: Share it on social media, where it gets lost in the sea of everyone else’s attempts at being ironically retro. Your friends will comment with hearts and fire emojis, pretending they understand the artistry, but really they’re just hoping you’ll like their next post.

And there you have it: the digital collodion process. All the aesthetic, none of the hassle, and a whole lot of pretense.

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The Art of Entry

Have you ever considered how much an entrance can say about a building?

I'm not talking about those automatic sliding doors at shopping malls, but real entrances—the kind that make you wonder if you're about to step into a building or another dimension.

That's exactly what I aimed to capture with my series of images.

Each image is an invitation to ponder what's beyond: a heavy, weathered door with years of untold stories; a threshold that seems to dare you to enter; an entrance that looks at you with a judgmental air, like an old aunt at a family dinner. And then there are those that look straight out of a film noir set, where you half expect to see a detective in a trench coat and fedora.

The point is, these shots aren't just images of doors and entrances. They're little manifestos of character, personality, and, dare I say, humor. Each shot is a story that starts the moment you stop to look, wondering who lives there, who works there, or who's just passing by.

So, next time you walk past an entrance, take a moment. There might be more there than you think. Or maybe, like in one of my shots, you'll just laugh at the absurdity of a door too big for a building that's too small. Or vice versa.

And remember: every door is an invitation, even when it looks like it wants to stay closed. It's a bit like life, after all.

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Camus and the Flux Capacitor: A DIY Delusion

The covers of Popular Mechanix are like the bastard lovechild of René Magritte and a caffeine-fueled assembly line worker but I love them.

Each one is a Dadaist masterpiece of gears, sprockets, and promises of a DIY utopia that only Kafka could dream up. You know the drill—glossy spreads featuring robotic butlers, flying cars, and enough contrived optimism to make Sartre gag.

The philosophy here is clear: you, too, can conquer your meaningless existence with the right torque wrench and some elbow grease. It's a Nietzschean power fantasy wrapped in tinfoil and LED lights, whispering sweet nothings about the Übermensch you'll become once you figure out how to install that flux capacitor in your 1997 Honda Civic.

But let’s face it, these covers are the epitome of kitsch, a Warholian parody of progress. They celebrate a future that’s perpetually just out of reach, dangling like a carrot in front of the Sisyphean task that is modern life. Each issue is a promise that your next project will be the one that finally brings meaning to your existence, even as you drown in a sea of hex keys and misplaced screws.

So here’s to the dreamers, the builders, and the hopeless romantics who believe in a better tomorrow through the magic of Popular Mechanix. Keep reaching for those gears, my friends. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself trapped in a Camusian nightmare, where the only escape is another issue with another shiny cover promising salvation through the next great DIY project.

All images are copyright 2024 by Andrea Bigiarini - All rights reserved.

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Stolen Cars

The term "Stolen Car" was coined by the American singer Jerry Jeff Walker and appears on the back cover of his first LP "Mr. Bojangles.".

It referred to his white Karmann Ghia, sold under the Volkswagen brand between 1955 and 1974 and assembled by the Karmann bodywork company. A beautiful car with decidedly retro lines and damn controversial.

The Stolen Cars.

The same car, but a convertible, belonged to a friend of mine whom we’ll call Marcus Cortes, also stylish and very controversial, who named the car "Stolen Car" in honor of Jerry Jeff Walker. Well, this series of images of deliberately retro cars I decided to name with the same name.

It's not a very interesting story, but that's it. Enjoy the viewing.