Observing some playgrounds in Milan during the day, I thought of isolating them and photographing them without mothers or children, and studying their essential form. And the only way was to photograph them at night. It seemed to me these pictures were somehow frozen, even more fixed than photography itself. As though they were timeless and the subject was not immediately recognisable. I didn’t think so much about the absent children or the symbolic weight of the places, I simply concentrated on the forms. I started using my eyes to look for the structures that in the night-time space and light are transformed into mysterious objects, as though their function had become indefinable. I look for interesting forms and photograph them in many places around the world, in wintertime. One of the aspects I find important in this work is the actual moment I take the photo. The dark, the night, the cold. When I go on site, I’m very often not able to see anything through the viewfinder. And the exposure times are extremely long, so I just have to wait patiently. Photography reveals a reality that you can’t actually see when you’re taking the picture in the dark. It’s only later that I discover the precise shape and structure of the object, with its details, its scratches and little writings. I find this revelation quite extraordinary. The very idea of a latent image contains all I’m saying. But making this discovery when starting out from darkness, as though I were blind or could barely see, is a powerful emotion and strongly reflects on what I am looking for in my work.