In his photographic practice, Polici finds a formula for observing events while maintaining a deep connection with his subjects. His complicity with the world of graffiti writers leads him to investigate their limits and restrictions, smells and moods. Acting at night, when the city sleeps, becomes the stage for a rising emotional experience—one the photographer does not abandon in his lexical shift. His bond with the places he traverses and his fellow adventurers remains steady, along with the emotional state of being protagonists in an underground mythology, like faceless heroes who must define themselves before saving the world.
Ergo Sum simultaneously represents moments of waiting and action, of fear, visions of pure vitality, or suspended instants shaped by decisions that must be made to avoid the worst. For Polici, the photographic project is an investigation into a context that forged him as a person, approached from a new perspective that transforms reality into something unprecedented—a new world.
Ergo Sum fits into a line of philosophical and artistic inquiry that uses the concept of “supermodernity” as a keystone to describe the relationship between places and human beings. It explores transitory spaces, interstices, boundaries, and peripheries—places where defined identities dissolve into infinite possibilities, generating unexpected cultural and social connections. The image-space becomes that of the “encounter-city,” shaped by collective relationships, where the degree of sociality dictates the minimum conditions necessary for both personifying the city and depersonalizing those who inhabit it.
Valerio Polici, a flâneur-agent of his time, begins with an intimate need to depict urban landscapes shaped by personal desires. These needs, rooted in the crew, create new meaningful connections governed by unwritten shared rules—unique bonds beyond familiar environments and “certified” friendships.
In Ergo Sum, environments and humans share the same skin, nourishing one another through reciprocal experience. For Polici, finding oneself in the world is not synonymous with resolution or fulfillment but remains a form of expressive release—tempered between the urban body and human bodies—retaining a sense of claustrophobic anxiety, a compressed space where movement is limited and limiting, in constant tension, seeking a safe haven.
The installation conceived for Reggio Emilia suggests a narrative that echoes and emphasizes the original creative experience. The four large windows overlooking Palazzo Brami’s courtyard open the scene, hinting at the theme without revealing it—instilling doubt in the viewer. The interplay between man and environment and the bonds between individuals remain evident. The idea of concealment lingers, alongside the emergence of fresh, lateral perspectives—the only ones capable of mapping a territory shaped by the perceptions and experiments of those who traverse it.
Certainties from outside dissolve into discomfort and blurriness in the gallery’s first room, featuring monitors and sounds. Polici seems to catapult the viewer into a surveillance command center, where the feeling is one of watching and being watched in a constant role-reversal, heightened by the loss of spatial reference points in the dark. There is no resolution, only doubt, fear, and uncertainty.
In the second room, guided by a photograph, the installation suggests the biological and morphological nature of those taking action. Just as a virus infiltrates the body, so too do graffiti writers animate the metropolis’s guts—silent yet present, branding objects that collectively define the urban landscape.
Valerio Polici reveals in his photographs the full energetic and entropic exchange between environment and individual by exposing his own experience. At the heart of his work are private lives and hidden, unspoken relationships—powerful, necessarily honest bonds born from shared spaces that belong to us only at night. Si fallor sum.

In a fragmented and fearful society that responds to an inevitable and evolutionarily crucial melting pot by building walls and waving the flag of security to protect its last crumbs of well-being, cutting fences, climbing walls, and evading sensors becomes a political act—a mission with a powerful underlying message.
Cui prodest? What’s the point of it all? It’s the affirmation of self, as an individual, in an increasingly dehumanized context.
Ergo Sum, Valerio Polici’s first successful photographic project, captures the emotions of contemporary explorers who, in an era where the internet and Google Maps make every place accessible, find adventure by penetrating forbidden zones and wandering no man’s lands—seduced by their decaying allure.
Shot between 2009 and 2015, this series focuses on graffiti writing—a subculture in which Polici actively participated for years. He avoids a documentary approach, instead exploring its emotional dimension.
Access to such evocative and dangerous locations often requires teamwork and high organization. This is the daily reality for graffiti writers who, within their niche, recreate a vanished social fabric—one that prioritizes group safety and goals over superficial needs or image.
Polici’s photos capture the moods and atmospheres of these moments—a community that is both real and virtual, local and international.
Crews, often organized through digital networks, meet anywhere in the world to conquer trophies like the Buenos Aires subway or a train in Riga. These relationships, which might seem superficial, are instead forged in shared risks and mutual goals. Strong bonds are formed in just days or even hours—thanks to a helping hand, a stranger’s offered couch, or a meal prepared by a mother they’ve never met.
Demonstrating the primacy of the individual—or of one’s crew—over the mechanisms of a profit-obsessed society is often an unspoken aim of this modern ritual of exploration.
Capturing this is a serious challenge for the photographer, who must immerse himself in the same borderline world as his subjects—sharing their risks, failures, and triumphs.
Once in the whirlwind of action, no one can absolve themselves from responsibility. They become part of a single organism that beats in unison, pays for every distraction, and never leaves anyone behind.
An action lasting only minutes may require days or months of planning: surveillance, rehearsals, cut locks and fences. The moments before and after are as important and dangerous as the creative act itself.

Adrenaline, speed.
Stillness, calm.
Lights, total darkness.
Heights and depths.

Opposites meet on these journeys, and Polici tells their stories through photography—crystallizing part of the emotional heritage they create.
Much has changed since the 1970s, when writing meant seeing your name “go by” and winning style wars. Now, meaning is found not in the aesthetics of graffiti, but in the very lives of the writers—in their obsessive, almost self-destructive perseverance.
Capturing these fleeting moments is vital, preserving them from oblivion and offering them to an audience that may never enter those spaces—and thus may struggle to understand a phenomenon that has disrupted and continues to shape mass communication and perceptions of public space.
These are the stories of people who recognize no boundaries except those of conscience and energy, who share knowledge and experience to achieve collective results. Stories of anti-social individuals who, paradoxically, may teach us how to live within the community.