luca battaglia looks at carousels through the changing perception of movement

luca battaglia uses long exposure to turn carousels into light

Luca Battaglia takes the familiar carousel and transforms it into a luminous, almost architectural apparition in Ticket non remboursable, an ongoing photographic series rooted in memories of his childhood in Milan. Using long exposures of 20 to 30 seconds, the Italian photographer captures carousels as they rotate through public squares and city streets, allowing horses, decorations, and individual figures to dissolve into bands of light. 

Growing up in Milan, Battaglia regularly passed a carousel that has since disappeared. The attraction remained with him as an image connected to childhood, waiting, movement, and the peculiar way memories become attached to particular places. In Ticket non remboursable, that absent carousel persists indirectly, resurfacing through other structures encountered in different cities.

long exposure turns rotation into architecture

Battaglia’s photographic process removes the carousel from its immediately recognizable form. Working with an ND256 or ND1000 neutral-density filter, he exposes each image for between 20 and 30 seconds. During that time, the rotating structure traces continuous lines of light across the photograph. Horses and decorative figures gradually vanish. In their place, illuminated rings, vertical structures, and glowing volumes appear. The resulting forms can resemble floating architecture or, as the Italian photographer suggests, objects that have briefly landed in the city.

Long exposure records the carousel over several seconds rather than freezing a single moment. As it turns, its horses, decorations, and individual figures begin to disappear, leaving behind lines and bands of light. This changes the way the structure is seen. A carousel is solid and recognizable when still, but Battaglia’s photographs make its form increasingly difficult to identify. The movement remains visible, while the object itself begins to dissolve.

a circular journey that returns to where it began

The title, Ticket non remboursable, or non-refundable ticket, introduces another layer to the series. A carousel ride promises a journey while remaining fundamentally circular. It moves continuously without taking the rider anywhere else, eventually returning to the point of departure.

That circularity mirrors the movement of memory itself. Battaglia returns repeatedly to the image of the lost carousel from his childhood, but never encounters it directly again. Instead, he finds versions of it elsewhere. Landscapes change, contexts shift, and individual carousels take on different forms, yet something of the original memory remains.

The series now comprises more than 50 photographs and continues to grow as Battaglia encounters new carousels in different cities. The images form what the photographer describes as an imaginary constellation, connecting places through recurring structures, light, and movement.

Battaglia positions his photographic apparatus at a child’s height, allowing the long exposure to reveal a suspended temporality. The photograph, he suggests, strips the attraction of its familiar appearance and fixes fleeting sensations on paper.

when a temporary attraction becomes a permanent image

The carousel is temporary by nature. It appears in a square or park, turns for a while, and eventually disappears. Photography would seem to do the opposite, holding on to something that has passed. But Battaglia’s long exposures do not preserve the carousel as it looks. The longer the camera records its movement, the more the horses, decorations, and individual details disappear. Ticket non remboursable becomes closely tied to memory. Battaglia does not try to reconstruct the carousel he remembers from his childhood in Milan, accepting that it’s now gone. He encounters others in different cities, each with its own colors, structure, and surroundings. Across the series, these different carousels begin to echo one another. The photographs retain traces of their structures, but the movement transforms them into something less familiar. Battaglia describes this as a kind of visual memory: blurred, altered, and slightly unreal. 

project info:

name: Ticket non remboursable

photographer: Luca Battaglia | @luca_battaglia_photos