The Empty Arena of the World

A grandstand of colored plastic, in the heart of a clearing up in the northeast, in a Baltic country, surrounded by vegetation that recalls a battlefield. Ordered rows of seats await bodies, gazes, voices. But no one arrives. No one sits down. No one looks. This is how the world's stands appear today: empty. History unfolds before us like a match we no longer want to watch. Gaza burns, Ukraine trembles, yet the stands remain deserted. We have stopped attending, witnessing, allowing ourselves to be wounded by the sight of injustice. Perhaps we tend to believe that not looking is equivalent to not knowing: things exist if we see them. Yes. But absence is not innocent: it is silent complicity. The eye that closes does not erase the pain, it only consigns it to a deeper darkness.

Photography then becomes a mirror: it asks us if we still want to be spectators of the truth or if we prefer the comfort of indifference. Every empty seat awaits someone who has the courage to sit down and watch. Not to attend a spectacle, but to acknowledge. Because only those who see can remember. And only those who remember can oppose oblivion.


Luca Periotto
NP October 2025