THE SHAPE OF MEMORIES - Riccardo Magherini Fine Art Photography

A BRIEF SELECTION AND A FEW NOTES

The Shape of Memories is an ongoing body of work developed over the past years across several Asian cities, including Tokyo, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Hanoi.
Rather than capturing a single decisive moment, the project is built through a process of accumulation. Each image originates from the experience of moving through dense urban environments—spaces where multiple events unfold simultaneously, where perception is fragmented, and where no single frame can fully contain what is happening.

During these encounters, I collect visual fragments: gestures, architectures, flows of people, light variations. These elements are later brought together and carefully layered, forming a single image that does not aim to document reality but to reconstruct it.
In this process, time is no longer linear or fixed. It expands, folds, and recomposes itself within the image. What emerges is not a precise record of a place, but a translation of how that place was experienced—its rhythm, its density, its emotional atmosphere.

Over time, The Shape of Memories evolved as a constellation of interconnected series, each shaped by the cultural and environmental conditions encountered during the journey. Every city, every experience, gradually transformed not only the subject matter of the work, but also the visual language itself. The project therefore developed through successive stages of perception, adaptation, and reconstruction, where each series became both a continuation of the previous one and a response to a new lived reality.

The resulting works exist in a space between photography and construction, where the image becomes a site of convergence between observation and memory. Just as our minds do not remember in sharp, single frames but rather in a sedimented accumulation of sensations, these images hold multiple moments at once.

This curated selection traces the evolution of that journey. It moves from the electric, chaotic infrastructure of Tokyo and Hong Kong to the intimate, humanist street portraits of Bangkok and settles into the silent, earthy patina of Hanoi.
The Shape of Memories is an invitation to step inside the image—not as a historical document of a specific second in time, but as a living space where memory, emotion, and place coexist.

PORTFOLIO | PRESS | XPOSURE26 | THE SHARJAH MILESTONE | SALEH AL USTAD LEGACY AWARD