Human Borders is a poetic project that investigates truth and authenticity in a world marked by hypocrisy, manipulation, and imposed identities. Through poetry and photography, the work addresses the fundamental importance of freedom of expression and the inalienable right of individuals to define themselves beyond external constraints.
The project navigates intense and contrasting emotional states, from frustration and despair in the face of oppression and injustice to a persistent sense of hope and determination. Moments of anger and resistance alternate with more intimate and melancholic reflections on vulnerability, identity, and the human condition.
As a collection of poems and images, Human Borders invites introspection and critical awareness, encouraging readers to question social norms and internalised limitations. The work functions both as a call for freedom and as a denunciation of injustice, offering a sincere and engaged exploration of social tensions, inner conflicts, and the fragile boundaries that shape contemporary human experience.
The project is part of the subthemes Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss, Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction, Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth, The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
Author
Lorenzo De Luca
Lorenzo De Luca was born in 1997 in Rovereto, Italy, and grew up in San Benedetto del Tronto, in the Marche region, where he completed his studies, graduating from the “Giacomo Leopardi” classical high school. Through extensive travel, he developed a strong interest in different cultures and perspectives, alongside a growing commitment to screenwriting, directing, and, above all, photography, building a solid cinematic and visual background.
Alongside his visual practice, De Luca has maintained a deep engagement with literature and writing, particularly poetry. In April 2024, he published his first poetry collection, Vite appassite, followed later the same year by Vero pensiero. In 2025, he contributed to the collective volume Castagno, alongside other contemporary Italian poets, and published Soul Specters, his first poetry book written entirely in English.
His photographic work has been exhibited at the Duilio Cambellotti Museum in Latina, with Franco Fontana among the curators, and in December 2024 at the monumental complex of Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni in Rome. Photography and poetry remain closely intertwined in his practice: De Luca often accompanies images with short poetic texts, treating photographs as “instant, visual poems” and developing a personal language that bridges image and word.
