Wonder, purity, mystery, discovery, and tragedy are some of the recurring elements of Nicolini's photography which characterize The Boto.
The choice of faint images expresses the photographer's intention to respect the shy nature of botos, the pink river dolphins, confirming their air of mystery and elusiveness. Their myth is well known throughout the whole Amazon basin. Flippers and beaks vanish into the impenetrable darkness of the submerged enchanting city where they abduct young women and seduce them by taking on the appearance of fascinating men.
Thick red, bright orange, and yellow which is now pale now intense, are the tones which characterize this whole series of photographs. This reveals the photographer’s refusal to use artificial lights owing to his desire to limit, to the utmost, invading others' habitats. He therefore entrusts the assimilation of a small slice of hidden reality to perception rather than to one's gaze.
Since The Boto is a symbol of vitality and of suffering at the same time, Nicolini communicates through the evanescence of shapes and the ambivalence of chromatisms also in order to denounce the foolish slaughter fishing which some of the populations of this species undergo.
