Mauro Talamonti’s photography is always an act of crossing: of places, of bodies, of surfaces, of tensions. Un Velo di Pelle, this tension converges into a series of essential images, created entirely in the studio in collaboration with Brutus, the Turin-based leatherwear brand. Talamonti reinterprets an experimental material — a genuine natural hide rendered translucent through an artisanal process. The result is an optical and symbolic device, in which the body, wrapped in a transparent membrane, becomes a sculpture of light. A veil that both protects and reveals, transforming leather into a metaphor for looking — a fragile balance between technical rigour and inner vulnerability.
Leather as language
Brutus is not a traditional brand but a workshop that treats leather as though it were word, gesture, identity. Each garment is conceived as a unique piece, with experimental dyes and imperfections that become its signature. In this project, the translucent leather is no longer merely something to wear but a breathing membrane, a surface for revelation. The collaboration with Talamonti carries leather beyond fashion, into a hybrid realm between design and performance. The material becomes a device: it does not dress but envelops; it does not conceal but amplifies. It is a language that bends to the light, transforming the body into image and the image into sculpture.
Talamonti’s oblique gaze
Talamonti’s gaze is never flat but oblique. And in this new work, too, the photographer does not simply record: he seeks the very substance of the visible. In Un Velo di Pelle, this inquiry is pushed to its limits: leather becomes filter and mirror, barrier and transparency. The body, swathed in a veil that is at once protection and exposure, transforms into a fragile yet forceful icon. It is a gesture that unites rigour and vulnerability, where photography becomes not merely an image but an experience of truth. Transparency becomes a metaphor for seeing: an invitation to cross the surface and uncover what matter conceals and reveals.
Photo by Mauro Talamonti
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