bridge_between

Bridge Between A photographic approach to the history of Art and viceversa Francesca Seravalle

“Better thief than Photographer” Ando Gilardi

This is an editing /curatorial project to show the reminiscent power of photography. Every photograph taken is in a necessary relation with the archive of the imagination of the consumer of the image.

Each photograph when produced is “thrown” into a system of images to which it must inevitably relate.

Painting is an imaging system more structured and articulated through the centuries.

Photography is retracing the same stages of painting, but at that moment, these stages don’t follow any chronological progression. The Internet Age has broken the 19th century theory about the progression of style in the History of Art; we are now at year zero.

Most of the archives of humanity are collapsed in the same “nonlieu” where they indiscriminately live. All of the images created by humanity has a new statement and has become a Google algorithm and a sequence of keywords. On the Internet, the link between images follows a different mechanism compared to how a person would connect them.

The human method to connect two pictures relies more on the human experience, and especially one’s memory. When I look at a photograph, my visual memory, nourished by the years of studying the history of art and classic literature, allows me to reconnect the photographic image to the paintings with which I’ve had an experience.

The goal of these diptychs linking art and photography - is to inscribe the last expression of current art based on the research artists did in the past centuries.

After a while, I realized that this comparison enriches the lecture of both media. I believe that this approach in study of combining painting and photography can be an useful key to understanding the two disciplines. In fact, I think that if the pictorial image acquires from the photograph a sense of “immanence” and “realism,” then on the other side, the abstraction of the painting can give the photograph a “transcendent,” abstract reading.

Pierre August Renoir & Paul Kooiker The artist and the model La baigneuse blonde, 1881, Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Paul Kooiker Room Service 02

Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

After Bathing (nude study), 1910. Private Collection Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Nude Seen from the Back, 1880–1881. Tel Aviv, Museum of Art.