THE VERISIMILITUDE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IS PROPORTIONAL TO ITS CAPACITY TO ILLUDE. This paradox, which is the basis of much contemporary photography, has been considered in a peculiar way by Alice Miceli, who for years has devoted herself to reflecting on problems related to translation, such as the inevitable and radical reduction that an image without smells, temperature, sounds and the layers of history under the surface makes on the plethoric character of any fragment of the world, the nature of technical devices and their role in creating realities, and the amalgam of languages that elude the particular dynamics of each one.

In order to account for this, the artist, as in the case of the projects Chernobyl and In Depth (minefields), the latter of which was awarded the Pipa Prize and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Award (CIFO), delves into subjects ranging from the philosophy of knowledge and various sciences, such as physics, medicine and politics, to, as far as her field of action is concerned, cinema and photography, in addition to drawing, the substratum of all her actions.

Traversing these territories requires up-to-date passports, knowledge of the laws that govern them, the appropriation of specific vocabularies and some of their subtleties. It is no coincidence that part of her work is based on consulting archives and developing projects in collaboration with various organizations, organizations with alarming and, at first glance, unsubtle titles, such as the Institute of Radioprotection and Dosimetry, affiliated to the Physics Department of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), or, currently, the Cambodian Mine Action Center and Victim Assistance Authority.

Alice's research is guided by an interest in situations of silence. A silence greater than the one that comes from images of ruins - houses, cities and landscapes - eloquent and familiar motifs in this world shaken by cataclysms, natural or otherwise. But this is not entirely the case of Chernobyl, to stay in a case that deeply concerned her and required five years of dedication. From the artist's point of view, the images coming from the so-called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone were unsatisfactory. More than a space hastily depopulated since the terrible event of 1986, the Exclusion Zone is a contaminated area, 2,600 km2 half-dead, forbidden for the next 900 years, a land soaked in Caesium 137, whose radioactive effects cannot be photographed with the regular films.

Capturing it therefore meant developing film sensitive to the specific frequency of Caesium 137, which was then embedded in pinhole cameras or wrapped in black plastic and buried for varying periods of time, from two weeks to eight months, until the mephitic impregnation became visible. In parallel to the resulting almost abstract images of the deadly exhalation of Chernobyl - a name whose etymological roots go back to grass or black leaf, in short, calcinated vegetation - Alice also produced a series of straightforward documentary images of the place, records of the barriers that separate it from the territory of the living; the barriers, gates, and fences where posters, signs, and notices are hung, pinned, and affixed, the graphic signs of terror and fear, the visible face of a devastation hidden under fields and forests.

THE INTERIOR OF LANDSCAPES

While the usual records of landscapes give us the sensation of something obtained from the outside, the images taken from the films buried in the ground of Chernobyl are embedded inside, born from the radiation around them, they are, as Andrea Galvani has argued, sculptural images. With the In Depth Project, Alice proceeds through the interior of the landscapes as she advances through the interior of the images, demonstrating photography as a physical and optical exercise, and the point of view and perspective obtained through the lens as a "historical, spatial, pictorial" fact.

The first sequence, the Cambodia series, consists of 11 images of a single meadow with a tree in the middle, a deceptively serene sight for what is actually a minefield, an impenetrable stretch of land. Recent data shows that such fields are spread across 70 countries, sown with 100 million mines, killing or injuring one person every two hours. Despite their apparent tranquility, these are murderous landscapes.

The 11 photographs that make up the Cambodian series have the same dimensions, and although the tree in the center remains constant, as does its scale, they are not exactly the same images. The artist, guided by a demining technician, enters and traverses the minefield. In photography, there's a notion that each captured image represents the death of the moment depicted; similarly, in this context, each step Alice takes as a photographer could mean the end of her own life. As each photograph serves as a condensed product of memory, the fields she traverses carry the living memories of conflict and act as a constant reminder of the presence of death.

Each point chosen by the artist produces an image corrected for focal distance. In the first, there is a small ravine that serves as a border, a tree on each side, and in the background, behind the tree in the center, a distant mountain that is "brought" closer thanks to the depth of field. In the fifth photo, intermediate, the artist is in the middle of the field, the trees are behind her, and the central tree, corrected by the depth of field, has not been enlarged, it has remained the same size. The eleventh is the closest point of view that can be achieved without deviating, without exploding. In it, the perspective is stretched and the focal length is the shortest: the mountain and the trees have disappeared as if they were far away. Alice Miceli, who articulates the movement of her body with the lens device, is not only in the middle of a minefield, but also at the center of the image.