© 2003 Piero Leonardi.  All rights reserved.

 

"Romantic"

 

 

My father had a blue Opel car and, even though two others that looked the same drove about in the neighborhood where I grew up, I could recognize his from far away--even without reading the plate.  I was reminded of that odd fact several years later when I recognized my daughter’s moped among many like hers standing in front of her school. Her moped didn’t have any scratches or original stick-ons--no identifying mark that could have guided me.  I just knew which one it was.  I stood in front of the moped wondering whether things communicate who they are rather than what they are and whether another parent would have had the same perception of his daughter’s moped.  It was as if a feeling had developed between the object and its owner, a feeling that could be perceived by the one who shared something with the owner.
     

Did I recognize my father’s Opel car just because he was my father?  Did I recognize my daughter’s moped because she is my daughter?   And if this happens, indeed, does the object acquire an illusory personality thanks to a sort of emotional transfer that turns into a message?
                    

I did perceive that very message, though without knowing how.
  

I am a photographer, and I realized I might photograph that emotional transfer.  I might photograph the message the material sent rather than merely the material itself.   I started looking around in a completely different way, using a new awareness, trying to pass through the inanimate.  What increased my fantasy more than anything else was the image of washing drying on a line.  I thought about the way in which it was arranged.  I could figure out a family’s life by reading it.  My fantasy listened to the clothes and pants; they told about the personality of the one who had hung them out in the sun, of his habits, of his relationships, of his shyness, ostentation, reluctance…. I have even photographed clothes and pants trying to render these perceptions.
 

 

©  2003 Piero Leonardi.  All rights reserved.

 

"Den"

 

 

Step by step, I realized I was not photographing material at all; I was actually shooting what I could see in it.  Nevertheless, I was still unable to find a kind of fil rouge to link up all those attempts.  I was photographing my fantasy; I was not releasing what was in front of my eyes.  I was trying to listen to “the message” coming out of all that I was looking at.  This inevitably brought me to feel muddled and rather disorganized while making a choice.
 

Historically speaking, photography has usually been employed as a means to document reality as well as to emphasize it, following a constructive process that maintains that the element to be reproduced lies in the material, a constructive process that keeps the conceptual originality.  The use of the camera has enabled the photographer to overcome the technical hindrances of painting.  However, the different constructive process of painting has changed the photographer’s conceptual approach together with his interpreting skills.  Painting means touching by the hands as well as by the eyes; it means to feel the image forming under the strokes.  The thing is not yet completed; it gradually comes out after a process that first of all belongs to the mind.

 

 

© 2003 Piero Leonardi.  All rights reserved. "Botero"

© 2003 Piero Leonardi.  All rights reserved. "Comfortable"

I was actually searching for a key to help me perceive what I have always thought to be the painter’s emotion when he paints his work.  Why can’t the photographer undergo the same creative process?  Is it so perhaps because the camera keeps the photographer away from the subject, whereas paintbrushes allow the artist to create it by touching it?  Or is it the mind that gives life to it through the paintbrush?  Does the time taken to accomplish the work help the artist as well as the photographer with the process?

While I was trying to focus my reflections, I approached Duchamp’s work, his “ready-made”, the deep sharing with Man Ray and the process the French painter underwent for Conceptual Art.  I was fascinated by the raising of common objects to works of art.  They were dégagés from sentimentalism as well as from bonds of affection.  And it was thanks to “ready-made” that I realized my father’s Opel car or my daughter’s moped were objects tied up by strong bonds of affection which I shared.  The clothes and pants hanging out in the sun were tied up by the same strong bonds, since they belonged to someone.

I gradually started rearranging my research, which I did not consider as such yet.  I kept on examining the world through an interpretative glance, trying to overcome the visual impact of superficial looking to reach a more hidden essence.  I tried to shoot the passing of time on the bark of the trees, to click the rest in a heap of worn tires, to release the cool in ripples or in the shade of an oak-tree.  All and each I saw was leaving its material aspect, turning into the vehicle of that very sensation.

 

 

© 2003 Piero Leonardi.  All rights reserved.

 

"Friends"