Luca Manfredi has walked the land and has seeded a memory of it’s people with his vision of Irish Pavee kids. Precocious and mysterious lads, they draw upon their inner strength to find a place within themselves where removal from a place does not create sorrow, but freedom. At ten years old with their own horse they are like complete adults. They sway in the meadows with a cerulean aura on their skin and excitement on their faces as if they were continuously singing. They are young, around eight, but for some inexplicable reason they carry on as though they were grown men. They have many siblings among their own kind, were raised without formal schooling, and are children of extended ‘families’ where their own language of signs and gestures are recognized without judgement. Luca Manfredi is a carrier of stories. He registers facts in the moment, and shares them for us to perceive and process. This is not a photo collection simply depicting things to be seen, but a collection offering a channel to see things anew. In each shot Manfredi has an intended message, successfully conveys this through his potent images. The pictures capture a moment in time with a click of the shutter, preserving an instant where his intention and his result merge perfectly.
