Which Part of “No Smoking” Got You Lost?

In the waiting hall of the local court, the walls speak louder than the people. Four separate notices, two of them screaming Vietato Fumare in different typographic voices, one barking about mobile phones, and another swathed in the formal tone of bureaucracy. It’s not so much signage as it is a visual overkill — a redundancy parade that says as much about the environment as it does about the rules themselves.

I framed this shot to exaggerate the emptiness around the signs. The expanse of bare white wall creates an almost comical isolation, leaving the text to float in their own authoritative bubbles. The placement isn’t random — I kept them distributed within the frame so the eye has to hop from one to the next, like a scavenger hunt of prohibition.

Technically, the exposure had to contend with stark contrasts: bright artificial light bouncing off white paint, printed paper with sharp blacks, and the faint shadowing where the sheets curl from the wall. I slightly overexposed, knowing the highlights would survive but wanting the background to remain clinically bright, almost antiseptic. It suits the institutional sterility of the setting.

Compositionally, it’s minimalism with a twist — the clutter here isn’t in the objects but in the messages themselves. By isolating them in an otherwise blank frame, the absurdity becomes the subject. You don’t need to read Italian to get the point. The wall is shouting.