There was a summer when life still seemed to belong to people. Not necessarily a better, simpler, or happier life, but certainly a more physical, more exposed life, in which relationships needed the presence and the words of the past to be spoken. It was the summer of La Dolce Vita, the one described by Fellini through Rome, the cars, the cafes, the terraces, the parties, the loves, and the seemingly endless nights. But beyond the glamour, what that season represented was above all a way of being together: people met, talked, argued, fell in love, and were disappointed. Relationships had a place, a time, and above all, a body. To talk to someone, you had to seek them out. A phone call had a beginning and an end, a letter took time, a meeting brought the possibility of being surprised by what the other person would say. Conversations could last hours and didn't necessarily have a purpose. We talked about politics, cinema, love, money, the future, often flitting from one topic to another without bothering to reach a conclusion. There was still a certain freedom in being contradictory, in changing one's mind, in exposing one's weaknesses without having to immediately transform them into something presentable.
Friendships and shared emotions on digital platforms
Today we live in a seemingly opposite situation. We are constantly reachable, but that doesn't mean we're any closer. Friendships are shared digitally, professional relationships are expressed through emails and texts, emotions are entrusted to photographs, short texts, icons, and images that are gradually replacing the complexity of a conversation. We've multiplied the possibilities for communication to the point of making silence almost impossible, but in doing so, we've perhaps lost something essential: the ability to truly speak.
This is where art can become an extraordinary tool for reading the present
To tell this transformation, even more than the nostalgia for the Dolce Vita, a painting by comes to mind Edward Hopper: nighthawks, created in 1942. Four people are gathered in an American diner at night. They are close together, separated only by a counter and a large window, bathed in the artificial light of the diner while the city around them appears completely deserted. Apparently nothing is happening. Yet, in that still scene, Hopper manages to convey one of the most profound conditions of modernity: the distance between human beings even when they are physically close. Hopper depicted this solitude long before the advent of the Internet and social networks, and for this very reason his work appears surprisingly prophetic today. The diner's large window could be read as a metaphor for the contemporary screen: it allows us to see others, to be seen, to constantly know what they are doing, but not necessarily to reach them. Distance is no longer geographical. It is emotional, psychological, sometimes even existential.
Our era has also profoundly transformed the way we construct our identity
We've learned to select photographs, choose words, decide what to show and what to leave out of the frame. Each individual can become the author of their own representation and build, day after day, a more orderly, more interesting, happier, and more confident version of themselves than the one that real life almost never allows. We don't just show who we are: we show who we want others to believe we are. This is perhaps one of the most subtle forms of contemporary solitude. We're no longer simply afraid of being alone; we're afraid of being seen in our authenticity. Being truly known means allowing others to also encounter our contradictions, our weaknesses, our failures, the days with nothing to say. It means accepting that we aren't always interesting, desirable, efficient, or happy. In a society built on representation, this imperfection can almost become a form of courage. This is why the transition from the Dolce Vita to our present is not simply the transition from an analog to a digital age. It's the transition from presence to representation. Once upon a time, a person could know us because they had shared a part of their life with us; today, they can know us through a selection of images and words we have chosen to share. In the first case, we are encountered in our complexity; in the second, we are often observed through a narrative we have constructed ourselves. The difference is not marginal. Representation allows for control, while presence always introduces a measure of unpredictability. When we are actually in someone's presence, we cannot immediately change what they think of us, correct a sentence, erase a facial expression, or replace a photograph with a more successful one. A real encounter involves an element of risk. And it is precisely that risk that makes a relationship authentic.
What has been lost
Perhaps this is what we have, without realizing it, lost. Not so much the Dolce Vita in its high-society dimension, with its parties, its luxury, and its cinematic imagery, but rather the freedom to live without having to constantly transform life into an image. The freedom of a conversation that doesn't have to be productive, of a friendship that doesn't have to be flaunted, of a love that doesn't have to be recounted, of an evening that can end without leaving a digital trace. In this sense, Hopper belongs not only to the history of twentieth-century American art. His painting continues to speak to our present because it doesn't simply depict solitude: it depicts the difficulty of encounter. His characters aren't necessarily separated by physical distance, but by something more difficult to bridge. They are in the same place, yet they seem to inhabit different worlds. This is perhaps the most accurate image of our contemporary world: a world in which we can simultaneously be in touch with hundreds of people and profoundly alone in front of a screen. We have more tools to express ourselves than in any other era, and, paradoxically, fewer and fewer opportunities to simply be ourselves.
An evident loneliness
True nostalgia for the Dolce Vita, then, shouldn't be nostalgia for an unrepeatable era. It should be a question about the present. About how much we are still capable of being together without representing ourselves, of listening without immediately responding, of speaking without transforming every thought into a message, of living a moment without feeling the need to photograph it. This is what makes nighthawks Still so disturbing and contemporary. Hopper paints four people gathered in the same space, under a bright light, while the city outside is silent. No one seems truly alone, and for this very reason, their loneliness becomes even more evident. More than eighty years later, that scene could be the perfect representation of our summer: an entire connected world, full of images, messages, and conversations, in which the most difficult question remains the same: How capable are we today of truly meeting each other?
