Apogee Photo Magazine

Some Interior Views of Italian Photography Today

by Gianni Romano

When discussing photography in Italy, many people automatically structure the conversation around the Alinari Brothers. The simple fact that masters from early in the century continue to be a reference is an example of how much Italians have been lacking what could be defined as a "photographic culture," so well developed in other European countries such as France and Germany and so integral to the overall culture in a country like the USA.

In recent times, the discreet success of established photographers such as Gabriele Basilico and Mimmo Jodice has fostered new interest in what's going on--photographically speaking--in a country whose amazing amount of history makes people forget such a thing as contemporary aesthetic issues could exist.

In December of 1996, the Italian Foundation for Photography ("Fondazione Italiana per la Fotografia", based in Turin) commissioned me to conduct a quick survey, the task of which was to identify the real content of the recent photography boom in the contemporary art market in Italy. While delving into this investigation, I determined that a new generation was born at the beginning of the 90's--artists who pulled Italian photography away from the established portraiture of the monumental mix of disaster and beauty of today's landscape. Instead, the new breed chose to bring up new issues, to step backward in order to experience a closer, personal look at things. Most of their works illustrate a general urge to see the spaces in which they live-- their "rooms" or the space through which they merely pass--as the pivotal and metaphorical location of their own existence. Whether or not their work looks into the world or restricts its gaze to their living quarters, this spatial condition is reflected throughout their photography.

For this discussion, I've selected works that easily communicate a state of spatial regression, this intimate trip in and out of personal architectures. We can divide our subjects into two main bodies of work: a pseudo-realistic area and a more fictitious one. The works of Carlo Benvenuto, Monica Carocci, Luisa Lambri and Alessandra Tesi belong in the first group.

Pseudo-Realistic Photography

Luisa Lambri's (born in 1969 - lives in Milan) photographs induce no revelations, neither do they fulfill the role of photography as visual truth. Her pictures seem to be everything they are not. They look like black-and-white prints, but they are in color. They would seem to be reportage shots of interiors and architectural details, yet she shows no interest for cataloging. We get the feeling these scenes are part of a travelogue, but there's no indication of where they were taken. She presents a vision of the outside world in such a way as to visually render a primordial knowledge of space, producing a feeling of uncertainty about it, especially the urban spaces we inhabit or pass through during our daily existence. As a matter of fact, Lambri's not that interested in describing places. She thinks "the truth is out there," but it might be rather personal, a truth which deserves a mapping of the geography of the self.

"Out there" is an alien place for Carlo Benvenuto (born in Novara in 1966 -lives in Milan). He is so pleased by living in his own house that he never takes a picture outside of it. In fact, he shoots less than ten photographs every year. Most of his work consists of observations of a subject from different perspectives, witnessing his own states of affection toward the subject. "Photography is too easy," he admits. "Sometimes I can think of a photograph for a month, look at the selected object from different points of view, observing it everyday and then, finally, shoot it with my camera." We can almost dare to define his work as "Zen and the Art of Photographic Maintenance." The only external photograph he has made thus far is "Jardin Extraordinaire," which is a view from the window of his flat. He considers his place to be such an intense universe in itself that the world outside couldn't be other than "extraordinaire."

As Benvenuto plays with the idea of realism, Alessandra Tesi (born in 1969 - lives in Bologna) plays with the idea of defamiliarization of passages, corridors, and public sites she finds in decadent hotels. To her, photography is a way of capturing the fragments of realities hidden by ordinary life. In contrast to Benvenuto, who doesn't leave his house so he can become better acquainted with his beloved things, Alessandra Tesi is able to move herself to a hotel and spend a month of her life there, taking all the pictures she needs to keep track of what she defines as "the corruption of reality." In order to confirm an absence, the passage of human beings, she photographs surfaces that have lost their smoothness, creating a double clash with the smoothness of the photographic paper itself. Being incapable of escaping her (and our own) memory of things and deeds, she isolates these elements through a practice of estrangement which, in essence, allows her to exorcise her memories.

Monica Carocci (born in 1966 - lives in Turin) plays with perception and point of view, confusing the viewer's sense of reality. She creates a suspension of belief that allows her to abuse and misuse photography in order to question representation. Her photographs are a witty combination of "street photography" and "stage photography." Only rarely can the viewer realize which of the two she's been using, since very often what appears to be an exterior monument could very easily be a model lit by a candle. Besides her use of models, another important technique which brings Carocci close to the techniques employed by painters is her physical manipulation of her photographs. She treats photographic paper as if it were canvas, altering it with chemicals, casual toning, by scratching and sometimes tearing the paper.

Fictitious Photography

A second area of contemporary photography, which I named "fictitious," is defined by the works of Martino Coppes and Sarah Ciracì. MARTINO COPPES (born in 1964, lives in Switzerland) chooses to invent new images by literally sneaking into plastic refuse with his camera. The setting is made of waste products he finds around his studio in Tessin. After preparing the set, Coppes begins to penetrate these structures visually in search of the images he's after. Eventually, he discovers a landscape in the microcosm of a piece of plastic.

 

Coppes recycles the significance of other people's trash and, in so doing, establishes his own poetics. The process is one of displacement in which the viewer discovers a new space, one suggesting a condition of inner emptiness arising from the difficulties of being. It is not merely by chance that sometimes these abstract landscapes suggest a suspicion that we will find ourselves--not within an object, but outside a body proffering its curves and wounds. Each one of his pictures renews this fundamental sense of ambiguity--not knowing if we are inside something or near someone.

If Coppes still employs the ambiguity of being in and out of a landscape, Sarah Ciracì (born in 1972 - lives in Milan) declares her landscapes to be completely fictitious, appropriated from magazines, reshaped in a computer and finally printed. According to Ciracì, fiction is the only reality. "Only the artificial can really help us to understand our mental images. My photographs of deserts do not exist in reality. They are metaphors of a mental condition." In fact, these deserts are processed entirely within her studio--in a computer, a box, a room (camera)--and yet they aim to participate in an open discourse. Far from being an escapist, either in fiction or in reality, Sarah Ciracì is actually concerned with the impossible task of creating a positive image for the future.

In this short trip from a cup of tea (Benvenuto) to an open desert (Ciracì), I've demonstrated the different ways in which a new generation of Italian photographers expresses an artistic attitude which goes beyond iconoclastic influences on representation and provides an experience of immaterial distinctions between public and private, in and out--a continuous "mise en scene" of daily life which start with our "camera" and leads down unexpected paths.

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Gianni Romano (born in 1960 - lives in Milano) is a freelance curator of contemporary art. He has organized several group shows in different European countries. For the past three years, his attention has focused on the work of the new generation of Italian artists. He contributes to several art and architecture magazines, and he is director of the webzine "Postmedia" (a website dedicated to artist's contributions: http://www.undo.net/Postmedia). He has recently edited Collezionare Immagini ("To Collect Images") the first issue of a yearly survey on the state of contemporary photography in Italy which can be found on-line on the website Camera Club (http://www.undo.net/Postmedia) under the title "Collezionare Immagini." You can contact Gianni by e-mailing mu@iol.it.