Photographic / Photogenic

STRAPLINE

ITALIAN JOURNAL VOLUME 20. NUMBER XII. 2015

Photographic / Photogenic

GIACAMO PUCCINI. COURTESY PUCCINI FOUNDATION.

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ON THE COVER FRANCO FONTANA. MEDITERRANEO, 1988.

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ITALIAN JOURNAL

IN THIS ISSUE EDITOR’S JOURNAL 5 CONTRIBUTORS 6 NOTABLE 9 THE CAPRICCI OF CALLOT 14

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC CLAUDIA PALMIRA ACUNTO Editor-in-Chief LAURA GIACALONE Associate Editor GIANLUCA MARZIANI LUDOVICA ROSSI PURINI BARBARA ZORZOLI Columnists MAURO BENEDETTI Photography MOLLY ROSSI AMANDA SZTEIN Editorial Assistants VITO CATALANO Social Journal Photography

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THIRTEEN TO WATCH PORTFOLIOS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) LETIZIA BATTAGLIA, MIMMO JODICE, FRANCO FONTANA, BERENGO GARDIN, FERDINANDO SCIANNA, CHARLES H. TRAUB, LUCA CAMPIGOTTO,

DAVIDE BRAMANTE, ANDERS PETERSEN, MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI, PAOLA DI BELLO, MARZIA MIGLIORA, MARINA BALLO CHARMET, LIVIO MANCINI, MAURO BENEDETTI, ROCHELLE CHEEVER

PAGES 23 - 63

ITALIA INSIDE OUT THE LEGACY OF LUIGI GHIRRI FRANK DITURI HOVERING IN HISTORY FLORENCE’S PHOTO TREASURE LENS ON WOMEN AND POLITICS STYLE ON THE TIBER

32 42 52 60 61 73

Printed in the United States.

STEFANO ACUNTO Chairman The Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. (IAF), established in 1947, is a not-for profit 501(c)(3), tax-exempt corporation that pursues a unique form of cultural diplomacy, presenting Italian realities to U.S. audiences. The Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. produces concerts, symposia and special events year-round in the United States and Italy.

Hudson Cliff House 131 Alta Avenue Yonkers, NY 10705 914 966 3180 ext.110

ITALIAN JOURNAL COLUMNS DIARIO ROME-NY: EYE ON THE GALLERIST 66 CONTEMPORARY ART: PHOTOGRAPHERS APPARENT 68 LITERATURE: THE LOOK OF THIS HEAVEN 71 FASHION: FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER GREATS 72 PHOTOGRAPHY: LIGHT ON NEW YORK CITY 74 FACE FILE: ISABELLA ROSSELLINI 78

www.ItalianJournal.it

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EDITOR’S JOURNAL

CAPTURING IT.

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t a recent talk at Rome’s MAXXI Museum, Ferdinando Scianna recounted being asked if he considered himself an artist. Paraphrasing him, he said, No, I’m not an artist, I’m a photographer.

Photographers must find a balance between what exists “out there” and what exists in their personal vision; whereas an artist may concern herself with just the interior version of the subject and its expression. In an article about Luigi Ghirri (page 42), this tension is articulated more thoroughly.

Italy as a subject has always fascinated both artists and photographers – its landscapes and personalities are irresistible.

Capturing its light –the particular light of any location – is the true mark of talent. When I first saw an exhibition of Mimmo Jodice’s photographs of Italy, I felt I had indeed “seen” Italy for the first time again. His luminous, minimalistic images immersed me in an emotional landscape; and despite simple forms and shapes, the photographs articulated the potency and darkness that is inherently paired with Italy’s splendor.

In reviewing portfolios for this edition, I have met and revisited this country through the eyes of some of the world’s most astute eyes – always able to renew my perception. The issue includes some photographic greats – including Scianna and Jodice mentioned here – along with a selection of contemporaries and also new talents. Of the photographers’ works, we preferred those whose subject included Italy as a reference point, allowing our readers to perceive a range of stories and feelings through this one, quite beautiful focus. n

MIMMO JODICE. PETRA, 1993.

6 CONTRIBUTORS

COLUMNISTS Laura GIACALONE

Italian Journal Associate Editor Laura Giacalone is an Italian journalist based in Rome. She works as a contributing editor and translator for a number of bilingual art magazines, academic journals and publishing houses. She was the editor-in-chief of the Italian quarterly Filmaker’s Magazine and lived in London for two years, where she worked as a writer and editorial assistant for Phaidon Press, contributing to the three-volume book Phaidon Design Classics (2006). She has translated into Italian the American novels Paper Fish (Pesci di carta, Nutrimenti, 2006) by Tina De Rosa and Shattered (La finestra sul bosco, Fanucci, 2010) by Karen Robards, and a variety of academic papers, screenplays, feature articles and advertising campaigns for international publishers and multinational companies. Her world is made of words, and she loves it.

Gianluca MARZIANI

Critic and curator based in Rome, Italy, Marziani focuses on the visual arts. He is the artistic director of the Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto and the artistic director of the Rocco Guglielmo foundation. He is the curator of the Terna award and participates in the Rai5 television program “Personal Shopper.” For the IED Roma, he runs a visual arts program. He has curated many shows in both galleries and museums, is the author of two theoretical books and numerous catalogs. He writes about art for all media imaginable. His website is www.gianlucamarziani.com.

Ludovica ROSSI PURINI

Ludovica Rossi Purini was born in Rome, Italy. Ms. Purini has built collaborations and concert series with the Italian Embassy in Washington D.C., the American Academy in Rome, the U.S. Embassies to Italy and the Holy See, Stony Brook University, several world-class conductors, orchestras and chamber music groups and many other important cultural institutions and venues. She is founder and president of the not-for-profit cultural association Compagnia per la Musica in Roma, and has been the President of the Honorary Patrons Committee for Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, member of the Executive Board of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome, a Supporting Patron Associate of the Santa Cecilia National Academy in Rome, a Knight of the Keyboard Charitable Trust and sits on the Board of the American Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra - among many other appointments. Most recently she became a member of the International Board of the American Foundation Project Rebirth and was appointed as advisor to the Center of Italian Studies at Stony Brook University in New York. She is currently working as creator and director of an international project entitled Rome Rebirth that will take place for the first time in Rome in 2013. Ms. Purini has received notable honors from various cultural foundations and institutions, including a recent award from the City of Rome, in recognition of her commitment to the Arts.

Barbara ZORZOLI

Barbara Zorzoli is a journalist and movie critic, radio and TV host, writer... and an actress for fun. She says she lives ‘up in the air’ between Genoa (her birthplace) and London (where she interviews actors/actresses and directors, attends premieres and visits movie sets). She is a contributing editor for Vogue Italia, the Italian Vanity Fair, Film doc and many other cinema magazines. She is a correspondent for the world’s most important international film festivals. She also writes about soundtracks for www. colonnesonore.net. Thanks to her passion for musicals she wrote the booklets for the entire DVD collection dedicated to Fred Astaire (Fred Astaire Collection, Edizioni Master, 2007). As movie critic she gives cinema lessons (in Genoa at Palazzo Ducale and The Space Cinema Porto Antico). This year, she is a member of the Genova Film Festival jury (July 2-8).

CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS David A. LEWIS

David A. Lewis holds MA and Ph.D. degrees in Art History from Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Lewis is currently a Professor of Art History at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA), where he teaches courses in Modern European and American art as well as the history of photography. Dr. Lewis has organized over thirty exhibitions, including retrospectives of watercolors by the English Vorticist, Dorothy Shakespear Pound (1886-1973), paintings and drawings by the American expressionist Rico Lebrun (1900-64), among others. Prof. Lewis curated and wrote the monograph for the traveling exhibition, John Heliker: Drawing on the New Deal, 1932—1948.

He was the curator for two recent exhibitions of contemporary photography: Rastlin’, a Southern Survey: Photographs by David McClister, and Frank Dituri: Of Things Not Seen.

Dr. Lewis is currently organizing an exhibition of Contemporary Texas Visionary Photographers for the Arezzo Fotografia Bienale (2014). He is also conducting research for a monograph on the British sculptor, Vernon Hill, to be co-authored with Michael T. Ricker (anticipated 2015).

Marina SPUNTA

Marina Spunta is Senior Lecturer in Italian in the School of Modern Languages, University of Leicester (UK). Her research interests include contemporary Italian literature; cultural studies; space, place and landscape studies; orality and vocality in literature; postwar Italian cinema; literature and photography. She has published on various contemporary writers and issues, has co-edited three volumes of essays, and is the author of two monographs, Voicing the Word: Writing Orality in Contemporary Italian Fiction (Peter Lang, 2004) and Claudio Piersanti (Florence: Cadmo, 2009). Her current research project, Viewing and writing Italian landscape. Luigi Ghirri and his legacy in photography and literature, can be accessed at: www.le.ac.uk/ghirri and http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/luigighirri/.

Veronica Marie WHITE

Veronica Maria White received her B.A. from Princeton University and her Ph.D from Columbia University, where her dissertation, “Serio Ludere: Baroque Invenzione and the Development of the Capriccio,” focused on the visual and critical components of 17th-century Italian drawings and prints known as capricci. Her academic awards include a Drawing Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Morgan Library and Museum, a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Columbia University Starr Fellowship and a Dorothea House, Casa di Cultura Research Grant. She has taught at Columbia University, Rutgers University and Vassar College, and has worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where she assisted with the exhibition of The Timeless Eye: Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection in 1999. She also contributed to the exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Playing with Fire: Neoclassical Terracotta Models (2003) and Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings (2004). Her publications include two articles on Guercino in the Burlington Magazine, as well as an essay on the caricatures of the Carracci in Voices from the Dorothea House (ed. by Pietro Frassica, Dante University Press Inc, 2014), and an introductory essay in the exhibition catalogue Frate Francesco—Friar Francis: Signs, Words, Images (New York: United Nations, 2014). She is currently Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Assistant for Academic Programs at the Princeton University Art Museum.

To contribute to the ITALIAN JOURNAL, please contact us via our website: www.italianjournal.it

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8 ITALIAN JOURNAL SPONSOR

NOTABLE

Photo courtesy Oak Knoll Pres: The History of the Library in Western Civilization

Notable Marconi Prize Awarded to “Father of the European Internet”

B Restored Michelozzo Library Reopens in Florence

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he Michelozzo Library at the Museum of San Marco in Florence reopened after undergoing an urgent one-year renovation, including restoration of the floor’s original design and the addition of panels that depict the library’s history.

The library was designed by Florentine architect Michelozzo (13961472), who worked with Ghiberti and Donatello, as the first public library of the Renaissance accessible via an external door. Natural light floods into the room with an airy arcade of Ionic columns flanked by groin-vaulted outer aisles and a barrel-vaulted central roof – a combination never before seen. The works of humanist Niccolò Niccoli and pivotal theological, legal and scientific medieval texts were accessible in Latin, Greek and Italian.

Three years after the Convent of San Marco became state property in 1866, it was transformed into a museum collection of Renaissance works. “[The Library] is an intimate and pure space, a space dedicated to preservation and study, to concentration and calm,” said Alessandra Marini, Interim Superintendent for the Museums of Florence. n

ritish Scientist Peter T. Kirstein, a key figure in the creation and internationalization of the internet, received the 2015Marconi Prize. Kirstein pioneered technical contributions and promoted network expansion in Europe and beyond, establishing regional internet networks in areas such as Central Asia.

The Marconi Prize is in the field of information science and communication awarded annually to scientists and engineers who utilize the field to further worldwide economic, social and cultural development.

“While he may not be well known here in the US, Peter is often recognized as the father of the European Internet” says Marconi Fellow and coworker Vint Cerf. “For the past 40+ years, Kirstein has made persistent contributions to the practical workings, adoption and application of the Internet worldwide.”

Kirstein will receive the prodigious $100,000 prize in London during the ceremony at the Royal Society in October 2015. n

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10 NOTABLE

Image courtesy of Renzio Piano Building Workshop with Cooper, Robertson and Partners

Notable Renzo Piano’s Latest Capolavoro : The Whitney

Rizzoli Reopening in NYC PHOTO BY TIMOTHY SCHENCK.

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he Whitney Museum of American Art opened its new home in the Meatpacking District between the High Line and the Hudson River with inaugural exhibition America is Hard to See. The new building, with 50,000 square feet of indoor gallery space and 13,000 of outdoor exhibition area, is the largest column-free museum gallery and a substantial increase from the smaller Upper East Side location. Near the museum there is an 8,500 square-foot outdoor public plaza dubbed “the Largo.”

“Here, all at once, you have the water, the park, the powerful industrial structures and the exciting mix of people, brought together and focused by this new building and the experience of art,” said the Whitney’s architect Renzo Piano of the renowned Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

The design is strikingly asymmetrical, a response to the neighborhood’s distinctive industrial, sculptural quality. The $422 million structure will include a street-level retail shop, restaurant, top floor café, 170-seat theater, Works on Paper Study Center, Conservation Lab and Library Reading Room.

“What’s interesting about this is the unique geometry, the high attention to detail. As you encounter the museum, there’s something different at every turn.” said Andrew Thomann, senior project manager of Renzo Piano Building Workshop. n

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ew York’s beloved Italian bookstore, formerly situated on 57th Street, plans to re-open in 2015. Rizzoli will join Eataly in the NoMad area at its new address of 1153 Broadway, on the corner of 26th Street. Renovations are underway in the 5,000 square foot retail space in the Beaux-Arts Saint James building, owned by the Kew Management Corp.

“For 50+ years the Rizzoli bookstore in New York City has attracted the discerning consumer of erudite, beautifully produced volumes on art, design, interiors, fashion, as well as literature, and important non-fiction books. Based on extensive market research in advance of the re-opening, we expect this customer-both New York-based, and visiting from all points national and international-to embrace the 21st-century version of their favorite bookstore,” said Laura Donnini, CEO of RCS Libri’s book division.

Once again, the Milan-based bookstore will inhabit an architecturally significant space, as it did in its former, distinctive midtown home. The historic location boasts an architecturally significant stone, brick, terra cotta and masonry building that dates from 1896. The design of the new store will embrace the old-world flavor of the 57th Street location, balanced with “contemporary innovations that will reflect the needs and desires of today’s refined customer.”

In the midst of an era that has witnessed thousands of bookstores closing their doors, why has Rizzoli chosen to re-open a bricks-and-mortar store ?

“While e-books and e-commerce is unquestionably forcing a re-examination of retail practices, the sophisticated consumer’s desire for a personalized and tangible encounter has created a newly robust market for an elegant, intelligently curated, and customer-service-oriented bookstore experience,” said Ms. Donnini .

Rizzoli International Publications is a subsidiary of RCS Libri, the book publishing arm of the Milan-based RCS MediaGroup.n

NOTABLE

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Notable Shifting Focus at Gucci

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Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images North America

lessandro Michele was named Creative Director of fashion giant Gucci. He was promoted from deputy when former creative director Frida Giannini left the luxury brand label after two years of decreasing sales.

Michele was given an early opportunity to prove himself at the Gucci Men’s Autumn/ Winter 2015-2016 show, when Giannini departed ahead of schedule.

The new director redesigned Urban Romanticism collection in less than a week, featuring an androgynous aesthetic, a stark contrast to Giannini’s references to archival Gucci pieces.

“Alessandro and I are fully aligned on this new contemporary vision needed by the brand,” said new Gucci president and CEO Marco Bizzarri.

This new hiring reflects the recent trend in high fashion of promoting rising stars within the company rather than seeking an outsider to invigorate a struggling brand. n

Mayor Nardella of Florence Meets with Mayor de Blasio

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ayor of Florence Dario Nardella visited Manhattan in early March, 2015 to encourage investment in Florence through real estate and tourism ventures. The Florentine team presented a new regulation plan which permits investments up to 1.5 billion euros.

This follows the private investments of London-based Tod’s contribution to the renovation of Rome’s Colosseum and Fendi financing the restoration of the Trevi Fountain.

“We decided to come here in New York to promote the culture and economic opportunity investment for our city, but I believe in a new friendship

MAYORS DARIO NARDELLA AND BILL DE BLASIO

between New York and Florence, based on the history, and on culture.” said Mayor Nardella at a meeting with Mayor de Blasio.

“We share a lot of the same views of the world, and a lot of the same issues that are the focus of our work.” said Mayor de Blasio.

Both New York and Florence have a bridge named after Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – which Mayor Nardella proclaimed a “symbol of our link and friendship.”

The Florentine mayor also visited Jeff Koons’ studio and the new Lorenzo Da Ponte Library. Mayor Nardella met with Peter Madonia, the vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, delegates of the Columbus Citizens Foundation. n

New IACC President Introduced ALBERTO MILANI, CEO OF BUCCELLATI INC., IS THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE ITALY-AMERICA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (IACC).

HE SAID, “I AM ENTHUSIASTIC TO LEAD THE IACC AND TO FURTHER UTILIZE MY STRONG MANAGERIAL AND TEAM BUILDING SKILLS TO PROVIDE GUIDANCE AND TRAINING FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS OF MANAGERS AND ENTREPRENEURS.”

12 NOTABLE

Notable Image Courtesy Milan Expo 2015

Largest Amount of Stolen Italian Artifacts Recovered OVERVIEW OF THE MILAN EXPO 2015

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taly’s Carabinieri recovered €50 million worth of stolen national treasures in January 2015. Over 5,300 frescoes, vases and bronze statues were found during raids of the Swiss warehouses owned by accused Sicilian art dealer Gianfranco Becchina and his wife Ursula Juraschek.

In addition to the aforementioned pieces, authorities found detailed item inventories, forged provenance papers, pictures and receipts of previous sales.

These may allow investigators to recover additional items illegally looted through the network.

“This is by a long shot the biggest recovery in history in terms of the quantity and quality of the archaeological treasures,” said Carabinieri General Mariano Mossa.

This discovery is the latest in Italy’s campaign to reclaim stolen national treasures. The pieces, ranging from 700 BC to 300 AD, may go on public display at the Terme di Diocleziano National Roman Museum en route to their homes in the museums of southern Italy. n

Milan’s EXPO 2015 Aims to Direct the World’s Attention To Nutrition and Food Resources

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rom May 1 to October 31 2015, Milan hosts a world’s fair with the theme of “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.” The universal, non-commercial exposition, EXPO Milano 2015, wiltl focus on sustainability and nutrition. It will encourage the 29-million expected visitors and industry professionals from over 140 countries to generate a dialogue about the earth’s non-renewable resources and food security.

Through a series of events, shows, conferences and meetings, the Expo will drive participants to contemplate how current actions impact the future of Earth. There will be four thematic areas in the exhibit: Future Food District, Children’s Park, Biodiversity Park and Art & Food.

The exhibition site consists of one million square meters designed by world-renowned architects Stefano Boeri, Ricky Burdett and Jacques Herzog, with structural highlights including the fantastical man-made water pond, a futuristic looking Italian pavilion and an open-air theater with a canopy made entirely of solar panels. The area is devised to resemble an island, with canals completely surrounding the site.

The U.S. Pavilion plans to incorporate the use of new interactive technologies to showcase various American industries. The initiative is entitled ‘American Food 2.0.’ In the official press release founder and CEO of the International Culinary Center, Dorothy Cann Hamilton said: “Americans are innovative and entrepreneurial – and through ‘American Food 2.0,’ we aim to showcase the incredible diversity that our food community brings to the global table today, not only through our trend-setting chefs and culinary innovators, but applying American innovation and ingenuity to address the critical issues we all face as a global community – food security, nutrition, quality, safety, and sustainability.” n

NOTABLE

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Notable

TULLIO LOMBARDO. ADAM, CA. 1490–95. MARBLE.THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, FLETCHER FUND, 1936.

A Masterpiece of Sculpture – and Art Restoration

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ullio Lombardo’s Adam is the only signed piece created to decorate the colossal tomb of Venice’s Doge Andrea Vendramin and one of the few Renaissance masterpieces outside of Italy. The late 15th century Venetian statue is carved from Carrara marble and displays a purification of form, with heavenly beauty and a dreamlike facial expression. When the viewer moves to the right, as Tullio’s angled inscription prompts, there is anxiety and uneasiness in the First Man’s stance and features originally unseen. This piece references the divine beautiful of Greek sculpture and thoughtfully adds lifelike Renaissance elements.

In the fall of 2002, the plywood pedestal buckled under the

weight of Adam and left the statue in 28 major fragments and hundreds of smaller pieces on the gallery floor. Multidisciplinary research from 2003-2011 was conducted by conservators, art historians, engineers and 3D image specialists to perform the unprecedented reconstruction of Adam. Several methods were pioneered to meet the statue’s specific stress distribution challenges, including 3D laser scanning, a new form of reversible adhesive and fiberglass connections instead of the traditional metal pins.

This iconic Adam is now on exhibition in a new permanent gallery of Venetian and Northern Italian Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and can be viewed in the round with panels describing the research, conservation and reconstruction process. n

14 ART HISTORY

THE

Capricci

OF CALLOT

A remarkable French Baroque artist helps establish a genre

by Veronica Maria WHITE “having then published the forty-seven pieces entitled capricci di varie figure – as if he wanted to show that he was unhappy with the works he had made until that point – he [Callot] wrote, in a dedicatory letter to Don Lorenzo for that same series, that they were practically the first results of his labors.”1 - Filippo Baldinucci “the dedicatory inscription … indicates only that they [the Caprices] are, according to Callot’s own judgment, the best works he had produced until that point; because, without mentioning his previous works, he says that they are the first of his labors, which no doubt he believed merited attention.” 2 - Pierre-Jean Mariette

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n 1617, Jacques Callot became the first artist to incorporate the term capriccio into a frontispiece inscription for a series of etchings (fig. 1). The Capricci di Varie Figure signaled a turning point in Callot’s career, immediately assuming significance as a highly self-conscious statement about style and invention. This article considers the innovative technical and visual qualities of Callot’s series, and its role in establishing connections among capriccio, disegno, and invenzione. I will argue that through the series’ unique format and sketch-like style, Callot encouraged viewers and artists to experience drawing as part of his inventive process. I will also show that his unusual compilation of so many varying images anticipated the imaginative arrangement of etchings in later seventeenth and eighteenth-century print albums and published volumes.

When he published the Capricci di Varie Figure in 1617, Jacques Callot had already been working for Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici for three years 3. Perhaps in the hope of securing approval from the next Florentine ruler, or simply appealing to a younger patron for a more experimental type of work, Callot dedicated his Capricci to the younger brother of Cosimo, Don Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was only 17. Boldly announcing the imaginative nature of his inventions, the artist framed the title of his series inside a cartouche decorated with two satyrs and a grotesque mask, and further included an ironic invocation requesting that the ruler accept his gift of “the first flowers I have picked from the field of my barren imagination.” 4 In 48 rectangular scenes measuring approximately 5 x 8 centimeters, Callot presented landscapes and cityscapes, as well as a variety of figural types, ranging from peasants and aristocratic figures, to beggars, bandits and grotesque dancers. With no suggestion of a unifying theme, the prints served primarily as a stage for the artist’s imagination and invention of novel printmaking techniques, including the use of a round-tipped etching tool known as an échoppe and a hard etching ground composed of mastic and linseed oil traditionally used by lutemakers. 5 The échoppe created precise, swelling lines that rivaled the burin’s accuracy while granting a freer movement of the hand and the hard ground allowed for repeated immersions

of the metal plate into an acid bath without the risk of chipping or foul biting.

Attaining stark contrasts between light and shadow through the varied use of parallel hatching lines, Callot was able to generate the illusion of planes receding into the furthest distance. He apparently realized the significance of his series’ novel technique, as he added the words “in aqua Forte” to the second state of the frontispiece which he included in the libretto of Capricci, elegantly bound in white parchment, for Don Lorenzo. 6 The series proved an enormous success: Callot was awarded a fee equal to fifteen times his allotted monthly stipend and by 1621, there were already imitations of the etchings circulating in Paris and Nuremberg, including the Capricci of Edouard Eckman and the Cours de dessin pour la jeunesse of Hans Troeschel.7 Upon returning to his native town of Nancy in 1622, Callot etched a second and nearly identical, version of the Capricci using a fresh set of plates that produced a greater number of high quality impressions.8 A second state of this series was later modified and published by the early eighteenth-century dealer Jacques Fagnani, who numbered the plates 1-48.9 Several 17th-century writers recognized Callot as a pioneer of novel printmaking techniques, including Abraham Bosse, who published a detailed recipe for the artist’s “Vernice Grosso da Lignaioli” in the Traicté des manieres de graver of 1645.10 In the Entretiens sur les vies of 1685, Andre Félibien devoted several paragraphs to the advantages of Callot’s

ART HISTORY

15

JACQUES CALLOT. CAPRICCI DI VARIE FIGURE, THE FLORENCE SET, TITLE, C. 1617. ETCHING. 5.8 X 8.5 CM.© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

hard etching ground, including the longer shelf-life of the copper plates, their ability to withstand a greater amount of pressure from the artist’s hand and their sharper depiction of details.11 Although Filippo Baldinucci dedicated few words to the details of Callot’s etching process in his Cominciamento e progresso dell’intagliare in rame of 1686, he was keen on noticing the sketch-like style of the Capricci that rendered them valuable as a drawing guide. Specifically, he referred to thirteen prints of the series, in which a minimal outline is replicated and enhanced with parallel hatching marks and short strokes to shade the figures and render them three-dimensional: “These sheets, with regard to the single figures, contain a sketch and an outline intended as a finished work that can serve to teach beginners how to draw well with a pen.” 12 Like Baldinucci, Charles Perrault also noted the pairs of figures represented in the Capricci, describing them in Les hommes illustres of 1696 as a means of helping students distinguish between the contour and modeling lines used to draw a figure.13 Callot’s sequential use of lines would have recalled contemporary drawing books like that of Odoardo Fialetti, but rather than representing one particular profile or feature, they emphasized the technique of modeling an entire figure through the use of fluid highlighting marks.14 Later 17th-century copies after the Capricci not only referred to the series as a drawing book, but as a model for learning a rapid, freehand style of penmanship.15 Callot’s incorporation of so many imaginative characters into one libretto and his use of novel etching techniques were highlighted by his choice of the title “Capricci.”16 In his iconographic manual of 1593, the Iconologia overo descrittione dell’imagini universali, Cesare Ripa singled out the trait of originality as an essential characteristic of the capriccio, explaining that, capricci are “ideas, that in paintings, music, or other areas, reveal themselves to be distant from the ordinary manner”. 17 The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca of 1612, published five years before Callot’s series of etchings, also clearly revealed the creative side of the capriccio, equating it with an artist’s “invention” and “fantasy.” 18 Callot’s own possession of an illustrated edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (Siena: Matteo Florini, 1613)--onto which he sketched a whimsical figure from his early style of ca. 1615 and added his signature--reveals his awareness of the capriccio’s im-

plications as an original invention.19 Furthermore, Callot’s series of Capricci and their insistence upon drawing foreshadowed Baldinucci’s definition of a capriccio as an invention inherently linked to disegno, in its most sketch-like form (“those first capricious thoughts of a painter, that reveal his conceit through a single mark of the pen”).20 Significantly, Callot was able to retain an effect of spontaneity in his series of Capricci by creating images such as the paired figures, which Baldinucci specifically referred to as “a sketch made as a finished work”. 21 Callot in fact became known for his flair for reduction in the Capricci, in which miniscule marks beckon the viewer to lean closer in order to appreciate figures and objects composed of only two lines. Several cityscapes, including a view of the Piazza della Signoria (see page 16), present the viewer with numerous architectural and sculptural details to identify, including Michelangelo’s David, the Fountain of Neptune and the Loggia dei Lanzi.

In a 1646 collection of poems written about an imaginary museum, Georges de Scudéry expressed the awe that Callot’s multilayered, small-scale compositions inspired in his contemporaries.

Crediting the artist with a supernatural skill of dissecting forms, the poet compared his microscopic figures to atoms: “Which animated atoms, Appear to have such sensibility?

And which hand created, These nearly invisible bodies?

One can barely see them, And yet everything seems to move…

You must have used a burin of gold, To express your fantasy: It was on diamonds, That your charming caprices, Achieved their glory….” 22 Scudéry’s amazement was echoed by Perrault who pointed

16 ART HISTORY

CALLOT’S SERIES OF CAPRICCI SHOWCASED THE ARTIST’S ABILITY TO INVENT A VARIETY OF SCENES AND FIGURAL TYPES THROUGH NOVEL PRINTMAKING TECHNIQUES. out that Callot was as talented at “depicting small-scale figures… and their actions, intentions and…characters with only one or two marks,” as he was at “including an infinity of things within a small space.”23 Such paradoxical combinations of the near and far and the infinite and minute, enhanced the capricious quality of the artist’s prints while reflecting his understanding of two very different modes of seeing.24 Callot’s awareness of the viewer is in fact demonstrated through the intermediary gesturing figure who turns his back to the beholder: a motif found in several of the Capricci (fig. 2), where numerous planes of standing viewers simultaneously invite and deny the viewer’s projection, subsequently encouraging a closer consideration of the artist’s style.25 The intimate viewing experience determined by the miniature size of the Capricci is further strengthened by the unusual framework for the collection. Following Callot’s initial presentation of the series as a libretto for Don Lorenzo, the Florence and Nancy series appear to have been published as volumes throughout the artist’s career. 26 Félibien describes the Capricci as a livre and the

series is listed as a volume in both the 1635 inventory of Callot’s belongings and the 1719 inventory of Guercino’s collection.27 Unlike other contemporary libretti, however, the Capricci departed from the structure of a narrative or an overarching theme that traditionally defined a serial group of images.28 The originality of the series can be better understood by considering the small books (“libri di quarto foglio diversi”) listed for sale in the 1614 Indice by the Roman dealers Andrea and Michelangelo Vaccari.

Among the libri of secular subjects are a volume of ten grotesques

by Antonio Tempesta, his libro of 47 animals, four landscapes by Titian and Luca Ciamberlano’s drawing book after Agostino Carracci’s designs.30 Following the format of these libretti, Callot could have created several different series out of his Capricci, which is precisely what he did when he later etched the Balli di Sfessania, Gobbi, Gypsies and Beggars in his hometown of Nancy.31 The artist’s original compilation of so many varying subjects into one book--an encyclopedic museum of his style and imagination--established a precedent

ART HISTORY 17

JACQUES CALLOT. CAPRICCI DI VARIE FIGURE, THE FLORENCE SET, CROWD GATHERED ON PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA IN FLORENCE., C. 1617. ETCHING. 5.5 X 7.8 CM. ©THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

for the collections of whimsical images that emerged soon afterward in print albums as well as published volumes.

For example, of the eight albums of prints which have thus far been identified from Cassiano dal Pozzo’s collection of graphic works, six include traditional subjects such as processions and architectural views, while two (begun ca. 1619) feature a highly unusual collection of genre scenes and curiosities, including prints after Arcimboldo’s composite heads, market scenes by Jan van de Velde and significantly, Callot’s Three Comedians.32 In contrast, most earlier Italian print anthologies – such as Scipione Gonzaga’s (late 16th century) and Giulio Mancini’s (early 17th century) – appear to have had a narrower focus on more traditional subject matters. 33 Once the capriccio had become a widely established invention in the late 17th century, collectors pasted the Capricci of different artists into one volume: one example is the Pembroke Album of ca. 1700 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which included the Capricci of Callot, Stefano della Bella and Salvator Rosa.34 By the middle of the 17th century, print dealers were grouping several whimsical series into one binding. Both Nicolas Langlois and Pierre Mariette published volumes containing different series by Callot’s follower, Stefano della Bella and Langlois also published libretti featuring a combination of series

by Callot.35 Although Don Lorenzo’s libretto of Capricci was disassembled in the early 20th century, the original organization of the images can be reconstructed to show that Callot’s presentation was intentionally erratic in its interrupted arrangement of the different sub-groups of images; one example is a scene of bandits that was placed in the middle of the paired sketch-like figures.36 Jumping from one subject to another, the group of etchings mimicked the function of a sketch-book, while giving life to Francesco Alunno’s description of the capriccio as a goat’s contagious and impulsive leap--a metaphor reinforced by the two diabolic satyrs on the frontispiece, as well as the goats featured in the backdrops of other etchings.37 The artist’s decision not to assign a numerical order to either the Florence or Nancy versions of the series ultimately enhanced the whimsical quality of his images by granting later publishers and viewers an interpretive role in organizing the prints into libretti and albums according to their own fancy.38 A highly self-conscious statement about invention, Callot’s series of Capricci conceptualized an artist’s inventive potential and process in visual terms. As the scenes in the sequences are unrelated, the viewer is challenged to examine each representation individually, focusing on its experimental style and imaginative cast of characters rather than its function in a linear progression.

Callot’s series of Capricci showcased the artist’s ability to invent a variety of scenes and figural types through novel printmaking techniques. The series’ title specifically alluded to the artist’s fantasy and to the images’ significance as original inventions.

Through the sketch-like depiction of several etchings, Callot underlined the importance of drawing, recreating his artistic process for the viewer and offering him a drawing guide. These etchings also highlighted the connection between capriccio and disegno in its most spontaneous form. By arranging the prints without the structure of a linear narrative, Callot created a collection of images that resembled a sketch book, encouraging collectors to examine each scene individually and admire his rich imagination and innovative technical experiments. n

Endnotes I would like to thank the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a fellowship that enabled me to examine Callot’s Capricci. I am also grateful to David Freedberg and David Rosand for encouraging my research on Callot.

1 “avendo egli [Callot] dipoi pubblicati i quarantasette pezzi intitolati capricci di varie figure, quasi che si volesse mostrare malcontento dell’opere fatte fino a quel tempo, nella lettera di dedicazione de’medesimi al serenizzimo principe don Lorenzo di Toscana disse di esser quasi le primizie delle sue fatiche.” F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, (1681-1728; Florence, 1974, IV: 377.)

2 l’épistre dédicatoire … enseigne seulement que [les Caprices] sont là, au jugement de Callot mesme, ce qu’il avoit fait de meilleur jusques alors; car, sans y faire mention de ses ouvrages antérieurs, il y dit que ce sont là les prémices de ses travaux, sans doutte de ce qu’il croyoit mériter attention. P. J. Mariette, Abecedario de P.J. Mariette, edited by Ph. de Chennevières et. al., 1853-1854; Paris, 1966, I: 273-274.

3 The earliest records of payment for Callot in the Medici Archives date to 18 October, 1614; see E. Bruwaert, “Jacques Callot à Florence,” La Revue de Paris, June 15, 1914, 832.

On p. 838 Bruwaert deduced the date of the Capricci from records of Callot’s supply orders, as well as a received payment.

4 “i primi fiori che io ho colti nel campo del mio sterile ingegno”.

5 See D. Ternois, L’Art de Jacques Callot, Paris, 1962, esp. 94-107; D. Russell, Jacques Cal-

18 ART HISTORY

A HIGHLY SELF-CONSCIOUS STATEMENT ABOUT INVENTION, CALLOT’S SERIES OF CAPRICCI CONCEPTUALIZED AN ARTIST’S INVENTIVE POTENTIAL AND PROCESS IN VISUAL TERMS.

lot: Prints and Related Drawings, Washington, D.C., 1975, xx-xi; and G. Filippetto, “Itinerario di Callot incisore al ‘taglio dolce,’” in D. Ternois et al., Le incisioni di Jacques Callot nelle collezioni italiane, Milan, 1992, 51-68.

6 For the second state of the frontispiece, see Jacques Callot, 1592-1635, edited by J. Schultz, Providence, R. I., 1970, cat. no. 9a. For Don Lorenzo’s libretto, preserved in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi (inv.

8609-8657), see Bruwaert, op. cit., 838.

7 Callot’s monthly stipend is recorded on October 2, 1615, as 8 écus, and he received 120 for the Capricci; see Bruwaert, op.cit., 83435, and 838. For the copies of the Capricci

by Eckman and Troeschel, see E. Meaume, Recherches sur la vie et les ouvrages de Jacques Callot, Paris, 1860, II: 643-44; D. Ternois, Jacques Callot, catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessiné, Paris, 1962, 218; and J. Lieure, Jacques Callot: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre gravé 1924-27; San Francisco, 1989 (hereafter L.), 86.

8 The Nancy collection repeated the same fifty etchings as the Florentine series, reversing only two of the plates (L.225 and 233), and replacing the city of “Fior.” with “Nancy” on the frontispiece; see Meaume, op. cit., I: 364-387, nos. 768-867; and Ternois, L’Art de Jacques Callot, 233-40. For a further discussion of the publication of Callot’s etchings, see Antony Griffiths and Hugo Chapman, “Israel Henriet, the Chatsworth Album, and the Publication of the Work of Jacques Callot,” Print Quarterly, XXX, no. 3, pp. 273-92.

9 See Meaume, op. cit., I: 11-12, and 367; and Marot, Jacques Callot, 55-56.Fagnani’s second state was numbered on all of the plates except the dedication and frontispiece. Meaume followed Fagnani’s order for his cat. nos. 768867, but Lieure made slight adjustments to his arrangement, and included a different set of numbers for the Nancy series (L.214-63 and

428-77).

10 A. Bosse, Traicté des manieres de graver en taille douce…, 1645; Paris, 1979, 9.

11 A. Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages…,1686; edited by A. Blunt, Farnborough, Hants, 1967, VII: 373-74.

12 “Contengono queste carte, rispetto alle sole figure, perlopiù lo schizzo e lo imbratto, fatto cioè a fine, che servir possano d’amaestramento a’ principianti del modo di studiare e ben disegnare con penna.”See Baldinucci, op. cit., IV: 377.

13 C. Perrault, Les hommes illustres…, 1696; edited by D.J. Culpin, Tübingen, 237. Félibien, op. cit., VII: 370, also spoke of the Capricci as a learning guide.Bruwaert, op. cit., 838; and Russell, op. cit., 19, in fact argued that the Capricci were designed as a drawing book for Lorenzo de’ Medici.

14 See D. Rosand, The Crisis of the Venetian Renaissance Tradition, Milan, 1970; and C. Amornpichetkul, “Seventeenth-Century Italian Drawing Books: Their Origin and Development” in Children of Mercury: The Education of Artists in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by C. Amornpichetkul, Providence, R.I., 1984, 109-18.

15 The Livre de Paysages de Callot… published

by Nicolas Langlois ca. 1692, upholds the value of the Caprices as a drawing guide: “pour apprendre a dessiner à la plume avec liberté, et en peu de temps.” See Ternois, L’Art de Jacques Callot, 89.

16 On the development of the capriccio in the visual arts, see especially E. Mai and J. Rees, Kunstform Capriccio: Von der Groteske zur Spieltheorie der Moderne; Cologne, 1998; R. Kanz, Die Kunst des Capriccio: Kreativer Eigensinn in Renaissance und Barock, Munich, 2002; and

V. White, Serio Ludere: Baroque Invenzione and the Development of the Capriccio, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ph.D. diss. Columbia University, New York, 2009.

17 C. Ripa, Iconologia overo descrittione di diverse imagini ...1593; Rome, 1603, 48: “idee, che in pitture, ò in musica, ò in altro modo, si manifestano lontane dal modo ordinario”.

18 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, Venice, 1612, 156: “E capriccio val pensiero, fantasia, ghiribizzo, invenzione.”

19 Callot’s volume of the Iconologia was recorded in his inventory and is now preserved in the Bibliothèque municipale of Nancy, Reserve 10050. See Marot, op. cit., 82; and P. Choné, “Jacques Callot, lecteur de l’ Iconologia de Ripa,” Le Pays Lorrain, 1981, 43-48.

20 Baldinucci, Notizie, VI: 469: “primi pensieri che fa il pittore di capriccio; come che in essi egli dia essere apparente al suo concetto con un solo tirar di penna…”.For a discussion of the connections drawn between capricci and rapid sketches referred to as schizzi or bozzi, see White, op. cit, 31-36.

21 Baldinucci, Notizie, IV: 377, referring to the pairs of figures in the Capricci: “lo schizzo… fatto cioè a fine.”

22 Quels Atomes animez,/Paroissent estres sensibles?/Et quelle main a formez,/ Ces corps Presque invisibles?/ A peine les peut-on voir,/ Et tous semblent se mouvoir…/Tu devois d’un burin d’or,/ Exprimer ta fantaisie:/ C’estoit sur des diamants,/ Que tes caprices charmants,/ Devoient faire leur gloire….G. de Scudéry, Le cabinet de Monsieur de Scudéry, edited by C. Biet et. al., 1646; Paris, 1991, 158-60.

23 Perrault, op. cit, 238: “Callot a été…particulièrement à faire les figures en petit, et à

ART HISTORY

19

AS THE SCENES IN THE SEQUENCES ARE UNRELATED, THE VIEWER IS CHALLENGED TO EXAMINE EACH REPRESENTATION INDIVIDUALLY, FOCUSING ON ITS EXPERIMENTAL STYLE AND IMAGINATIVE CAST OF CHARACTERS RATHER THAN ITS FUNCTION IN A LINEAR PROGRESSION.

savoir faire trouver dans deux ou trois traits de burin, l’action, la démarche, l’intention, et même jusqu’à l’humeur et au caractère particulier de chaque figure.Il avait encore un adresse singulière à ramasser en peu de place une infinité de choses….”

24 As Levertin first noted, the miniature microscosms suggest a knowledge of Galileo’s early version of the telescope and its further use--when turned upside down--as a microscopic lens. See O. Levertin, Jacques Callot: Vision du microcosme, Paris, 1935, 135-45.

25 Callot plays with the tradition of the interlocutor described by Alberti; see M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy… Oxford, 1972, 71-77, who characterizes Alberti’s interlocutor as a “choric figure.”

26 As no publisher’s name appears on either the Florence Capricci or the first state of the Nancy series, one can assume that Callot published both of them himself. In contrast, the second state of the Nancy series bears the name of Israel Silvestre.

27 See Félibien, op. cit., VII: 370.The inventory of Callot’s belongings (recorded from April 21-May 7, 1635) lists thirty-eight copies of the series as “Trente-huict livres de Caprices”; see Marot, op. cit., 80. The inventory of Guercino’s collection Section Y, sheet 4, no. 41 lists a “Librettino di Carte N. 36.

Miscelaneo di Capricij e varie altre Cartine tutte del Callot”; see E. Negro and N. Roio, L’Eredità del Guercino…, Modena, 2008, 117, no. 41.

28 For a discussion of some of the earliest appearances of genre subjects in prints, including topographical views, depictions of animals, and allegorical subjects like “L’Arboro della Pazzia,” see E. Borea, “Stampa figurativa e pubblica dalle origini all’affermazione nel Cinquecento”, Storia dell’arte Italiana, 1979,

337-43; and M. Bury, “The Taste for Prints in Italy,” Print Quarterly, 1985, 12-26.

lot’s Capricci di Varie Figure (actually copies) are 17.50.17-465-511.

29 See F. Ehrle, Roma prima di Sisto V…, Rome, 1908, 60-66.The subjects listed in the index are overwhelmingly religious.For a further discussion of the contemporary print market, see A. Di Mauro and A. G. Capponi, Bibliografia delle stempe popolari…Florence, 1981; P. Bellini, “Printmakers and Dealers in Italy during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, Print Collector, 1975, 17-43; and Ternois et al., Le incisioni di Jacques Callot, 29-50.

35 The Metropolitan Museum of Art has several examples of seventeenth-century libretti of Della Bella’s etchings, including a quarto, half-morocco volume of 81 plates (Pierre Mariette I, ca. 1642), inv. no. 23.22.1, which features the Diversi Capricci, Diversi Animali, and Conduites de Troupes among it series; and a book entitled Ornaments (Langlois, 1646), inv. no. 37.11.1, which includes different decorative etchings by the artist and opens with the Raccolta di Capricci et nove inventioni. For Langlois’ Livre de Paysages de Callot (1692) which contained the Capricci and Varie Figure, see Ternois, L’Art de Jacques Callot, 89.

30 Listed under nos. 445, 460, 495, and 475, respectively; see Ehrle, op. cit., 60-66.

31 See L. 379-402 for the Balli di Sfessania; L.374-77 for the Gypsies; L. 479-503 for the Beggars; and L. 279 and 407-26 for the Gobbi.

32 See A. Griffiths, “The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo”, Print Quarterly, 1989, 5-10, who notes on p. 10 that volume V is “by far the most unusual assemblage of prints that I have ever seen, and stands so far outside the common range of print collectors both in the seventeenth century and today.”

33 On Gonzaga’s collection, see M. Bury, op. cit., 12-26; and on Mancini, see M. Bury, “Giulio Mancini and the Organization of a Print Collection in Early-Seventeenth-century Italy”, in G. Warwick, The Arts of Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta and the Market for Drawings in Early Modern Europe, New York and Cambridge, 2000, 79-84.

34 The original folio volume (17.50.17) was disassembled, but is described in the Catalogue of Superb Prints, Drawings, Pictures and Armour from the Historical Collections at Wilton House, Salisbury…, London, 1917, 21, cat. no.

305.In the Metropolitan’s collection, Rosa’s Figurine are 17.50.17-92-153; Della Bella’s Diversi Capricci are 17.50.17-204-227; and Cal-

36 The libretto was most likely disassembled for the exhibition by P. Ferri et. al., Mostra dei disegni e incisioni di Jacopo Callot, di Stefano della Bella, e della loro scuola… Bergamo, 1914.

At this time, the pen and ink numbers would have also been added to the top right corner of the sheets. Therefore, one can conclude that the scene of the bandits (L. 221, Uffizi no. 8615, pen no. 7), was originally placed between two plates of paired figures (L. 235, Uffizi no. 8614, pen no. 6; and L. 238, Uffizi no. 8616, pen no. 8).

37 “un’appetito subito e senza rasone…che tenga alle Capre, che se una salta tutte saltano”.See F. Alunno, Le richezze della lingua volgare, 1543; Venice, 1557, 52a.

38 Thus, the numerical order added by Fagnani and Silvestre to the second state of the Nancy series differed from the arrangement of the prints by Callot in the libretto for Lorenzo, as well as that added in pen and ink by the original owner of the Florence series now in the Museo d’Arte in Padua; see F. Pellegrini, Capricci, gobbi, amore, guerra, e bellezza: Incisioni di Jacques Callot dalle raccolte del Museo d’Arte di Padova, Padua, 2003, nos. 40 and 41.n

20

DAVIDE BRAMANTE. “MY OWN RAVE” ROMA (FORI + ALTARE DELLA PATRIA), 2005.

PHOTOGRAPH ON FILM CREATED WITH MULTIPLE EXPOSURES.

21

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC RENOWNED LETIZIA BATTAGLIA FRANCO FONTANA BERENGO GARDIN MIMMO JODICE FERDINANDO SCIANNA CHARLES H. TRAUB

23 26 28 24 30 34

CONTEMPORARY STARS DAVIDE BRAMANTE LUCA CAMPIGOTTO MARINA BALLO CHARMET PAOLA DI BELLO MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI MARZIA MIGLIORA ANDERS PETERSEN

38 36 50 46 44 48 40

UP AND COMING MAURO BENEDETTI ROCHELLE CHEEVER LIVIO MANCINI

58 62 56

OBSERVED THIRTEEN TO WATCH 22 ITALIA INSIDE OUT 32 LUIGI GHIRRI 42 FRANK DITURI 52 ALINARI 61 AMERICAN ACADEMY 60 WOMEN AND POLITICS 64 STYLE ON THE TIBER 73

22 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

Fotografia

ITALIANA

by David A. LEWIS

Ora

We live in an age saturated by printed photographs, motion pictures, broadcast media, and digital displays. A constant stream of photographic images variously delight, confront, and perplex us.

In many ways, this imagery shapes our very understanding (and often misunderstanding) of the world in which we live. Moreover, the photographic image, arguably, has become the most pervasive art medium of our times; and as such, it presents both opportunities and challenges for the contemporary artist. New technologies and new venues in virtual galleries make it possible to quickly place imagery before the public. However, the vast numbers of contemporary photographers and their seemingly boundless productions, also make it difficult for any of them to reach an increasingly jaded—even numbed—viewing public. And yet, our collective fascination with photography persists, and the expressive potential of the photographic arts is far from reaching a point of exhaustion.

In the past few decades, artists have concerned themselves with several aesthetic, philosophical, political and social concerns that have profoundly determined the course of photography. To name but a few of the more consequential: 1) the questioning of photographic truth in quest for meaning in a contemporary context; 2) experimenting with photography and transmedia; 3) using photography as a means of constructing new realities: creating altered states and points of view, entangling humanity and environmental transformation, and/or exploring Postmodern themes of irony, subtext, and re-textualization; 4) developing new Photo-aesthetics in interaction with Pop culture and a new vernacular of the commonplace; 5) rethinking traditional, alternative, and digital photographic production in the face of 6) the ubiquity of photo-media; and 7) the socially and culturally significant consequences of that ubiquity, which might be called a fragmentation of audiences. To one degree or another, the artists represented in this exhibition explore such ideas and concerns in their individual practice, and as such, this exhibition well exemplifies these aspects of contemporary photography. n

Excerpt from the book curated by the author: Fotografia Italiana Ora / Italian Photography Now: Thirteen Young Contemporaries, 2013, Stephen F. Austin University Press.

Thirteen Young Contemporaries: Pietro BELTRAMI Jonida BULKU Matteo CASTELLI Laura GARFAGNINI Gaia GREGORI Peggy ICKENROTH Jacopo NECENTINI Virginia NICCULUCCI Virginia NOCE Mauro J PELLEGRINI Annalisa PISTOLESI Virginia RIGHESCHI Michele SEGHIERI

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

LETIZIA BATTAGLIA. PALERMO, LA CALA DISTRICT. THE GIRL WITH A BALL, 1980.

COURTESY PALAZZO DELLA RAGIONE FOTOGRAFIA FROM THE EXHIBITION ITALIA INSIDE OUT. (SEE PAGE 32).

23

24 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

MIMMO JODICE

ALL PHOTOS BY MIMMO JODICE. COURTESY GALLERY KARSTEN GREVE. TOP: CARTAGINE – TERME ROMANE, 1994.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

LEFT: DEMETRA, 1992.

TOP: VOLTO DI ATLETA DALLA VILLA DEI PAPIRI, ERCOLANO, 1986 BOTTOM: PETRA, 1993.

“ALL MY WORK IS BORN OUT OF A MOMENT OF EMOTION, ALL MY PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE RESULT OF A PARTICULAR ENCOUNTER THAT DETERMINES MY UNIQUE STATE OF BEING. IT’S AS IF THE FORMS, THE OBJECTS, THE LANDSCAPES AND THE LIGHT WERE PREPARING FOR ME, ALWAYS AWAITING ME. BENEATH AN APPEARANCE OF NORMALCY, MY WORKS HOLD AND EVOKE A DEEP STIRRING INSIDE OF ME FOR ALL THAT HAS OCCURRED OR WILL OCCUR; AND REVEAL MEMORIES OF TIMES PAST.”

Mimmo Jodice

25

26 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

FRANCO FONTANA

“TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS IS AN ACT OF KNOWLEDGE – IT IS A TAKING POSSESSION. WHAT WE PHOTOGRAPH ARE NOT IMAGES BUT REPRODUCTIONS OF OURSELVES. CREATIVITY DOES NOT ILLUSTRATE OR IMITATE. IT INTERPRETS, THUS BECOMING THE QUEST FOR AN IDEAL TRUTH. CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY DOES NOT REPRODUCE BUT INTERPRETS BY MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE.” Franco Fontana

FRANCO FONTANA. FROM FULL COLOR 2014 AT THE PALAZZO INCONTRO, ROMA. TOP: PUGLIA, 1978.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

LEFT: BAIO DELLE ZAGARE, 1970.

TOP: TEXAS, 1979.

BELOW: PUGLIA, 1987.

27

28 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

G. BERENGO GARDIN

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY G. BERENGO GARDIN. COURTESY CONTRASTO. VENEZIA, 1960.

LIDO DI VENEZIA, SPIAGGIA DI MALAMOCCA, 1958.

“THE PHOTOGRAPHER VIEWS THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY FROM NON-PHOTOGRAPHERS. BECAUSE THE PHOTOGRAPHER WANTS TO – I DON’T WANT TO SAY STEAL – BUT APPROPRIATE THE SITUATION. ” G. Berengo Gardin

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC 29

LA SPEZIA, 2005

GENOVA, 2002.

CATANIA, 2001.

30 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

FERDINANDO SCIANNA

“A PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT CREATED BY A PHOTOGRAPHER. WHAT THEY DO IS JUST TO OPEN A LITTLE WINDOW AND CAPTURE IT. THE WORLD THEN WRITES ITSELF ON THE FILM. THE ACT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS CLOSER TO READING THAN IT IS TO WRITING. THEY ARE THE READERS OF THE WORLD. ” Ferdinando Scianna

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY AND © FERDINANDO SCIANNA. PHOTOGRAPHYS COURTESY MAXXI MUSEUM, ROMA. TOP: LEONARDO SCIASCIA, 1964.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC 31

CAPIZZI, 1982.

BAGHIERA.

UNTITLED.

32 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

ITALIA INSIDE OUT

Works from the exhibition “Italia Inside Out” at Palazzo della Ragione Fotografia, Milan through June 21, 2015

FRANCESCO JODICE. CAPRI. THE DIEFENBACH CHRONICLES #003, 2013 CLAUDIO SABATINO..

POMPEI, 2000.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

GABRIELE BASILICO. ROMA, 2007

DOMINGO MILELLA. POLIGNANO A MARE, 2008

GIOVANNI CHIARAMONTE. TRAPANI, 1999

33

34 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

CHARLES H. TRAUB

“ITALY LOOKED TO ME LIKE A DYSTOPIA WHOSE INHABITANTS ACTED AS IF THEY WERE LIVING IN HEAVEN. NOT ALL OF THEM, OF COURSE, BUT MANY. AND THOSE MANY ENDED UP IN MY PICTURES. I THOUGHT THEY MIGHT BE VIEWED AS TYPICAL, YOU KNOW, NOT UNIVERSAL TYPES, BUT COMMON ENOUGH TO BE SIGNIFICANT IN A REPRESENTATIVE WAY.” Charles Traub

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

ALL IMAGES ARE TAKEN FROM DOLCE VIA: ITALY IN THE 1980S, BY CHARLES TRAUB, REVIEWED ON PAGE 30.

ALL IMAGES ARE COURTESY OF CHARLES H. TRAUB/DAMIANI THIS PAGE, FROM TOP LEFT: ROME, 1982; VENICE, 1981; NAPLES, 1982.

OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: AMALFI, 1982; BOTTOM: MILAN, 1981;

35

36 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

LUCA CAMPIGOTTO

“AS A PHOTOGRAPHER, MY FATE IS TO REMAIN FOREVER HOSTAGE TO MY OWN GAZE, DESTINED TO THE MISSION OF MEMORY, TO THE CIRCULAR MOTION OF NOSTALGIA.” Luca Campigotto ALL PHOTOS BY LUCA CAMPIGOTTO. FROM THE EXHIBITION ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DELLA GRAFICA, ROME. TOP: PANTHEON. ROMA, 2014.

OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: ARCO DI DRUSO, ROMA, 2014.

PIRAMIDE, ROMA, 2014.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

37

38 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

DAVIDE BRAMANTE

“MY WAY OF PHOTOGRAPHING IS IDENTICAL TO THE WAY I REMEMBER, THINK, DREAM, HOPE AND IMAGINE. EVERYTHING HAPPENS THROUGH THE OVERLAPPING OF TIME AND SPACE. I USE PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE SAME WAY AS I USE MY MIND.” Davide Bramante

ALL PHOTOS BY DAVIDE BRAMANTE. MULTIPLE EXPOSURES ON COLOR FILM (NON-DIGITAL PROCESSING).

TOP: “MY OWN RAVE” ROMA (COLOSSEO + STREET), 2005.

OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: “MY OWN RAVE” ROMA (FORI + V.LE GIULIO CESARE), 2007.

“ROMA CAPUT MUNDI” (EUR + SCULTURA IN MEZZO), 2012.

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

39

40 PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

PORTFOLIO

ANDERS PETERSEN

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC 41

IN SHORT, PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS MY MOST IMPORTANT SOURCE OF INSPIRATION, AND I LOVE ROME. Anders Petersen

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ROME, A DIARY 2012 BY ANDERS PETERSEN. COURTESY FOTOGRAFIA - FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE DI ROMA,2012, MACRO MUSEUM.

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THE LEGACY OF LUIGI GHIRRI

by Marina SPUNTA

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uigi Ghirri (1943-1992) is widely recognized in Italy (and, increasingly, abroad) as a leading photographer who since the 1970s gave a new impetus to Italian photography and a new aesthetic identity to everyday places, while contributing to founding an ‘Italian school of (landscape) photography’.

His photographs (all in color) strike the viewer for their apparent naturalness and simplicity and for being carefully constructed through classic composition (he shunned the use of zooms, filters or lenses); they focus on everyday objects, as if seen for the first time, seek to de-familiarize the gaze and reflect on the nature of representations; they explore nondescript, empty landscapes, as dream-like, vanishing places, raising questions about our sense of belonging and about the role and function of photography in contemporaneity.

Drawing on many different influences, from Italian Renaissance and 17th-century Dutch painting, to Surrealist and Pop art, from American Modernist photography to Neorealist cinema, from literature to music (from Beethoven to Bob Dylan), Ghirri’s multifaceted work reflects on the role of individual experience in a world increasingly dominated by the media, where the human being is no longer the measure for making sense of the exterior (and indeed is often absent), and within a highly codified visual culture, such as Italian culture, dominated by an overpowering historical heritage and art history tradition. While drawing on this very tradition, as emerges in the recurrence of central perspectives, of frames and windows that delimit the view, Ghirri sought to establish a space for photography as a means of seeing things anew, thus as a way of reflecting on, and challenging one’s preconceived ways of seeing. Ultimately, he thought of photography as a way of ‘thinking through images’, of relating to the world, and of finding a magical balance of opposites, between one’s interiority or aesthetics and what lies ‘out there’.

Viewing and writing Italian landscape. Luigi Ghirri and his

legacy in photography and literature is a two-year, interdisciplinary research project funded by the British-Academy, and coordinated by Jacopo Benci and this author from the British School at Rome. The first aim of the project is to broaden and better contextualize the study of Luigi Ghirri’s work – as a photographer, curator, writer and cultural catalyst – by investigating a number of unexplored facets of his work, various influences on his photography and many important collaborations in which he was involved, for example with writers Gianni Celati and Giorgio Messori (less known, but no less interesting). In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Ghirri importantly acted as a catalyst for a great number of interdisciplinary and collaborative projects, such as the seminal Viaggio in Italia (1984), projects which connected different artists, writers and scholars, many based in Emilia Romagna but also non-Italian artists, and brought photography more center stage in Italy. The second aim of he project is to explore Ghirri’s legacy in contemporary photography, literature and other disciplines and artistic practices, and to examine further the intersection among photography, narrative writing and the investigation of space, place, and landscape in Italy in the past few decades.

While in Italy, Ghirri’s photography has been exhibited regularly and studied extensively, giving rise to a vast bibliography in Italian, outside of Italy more people are discovering the originality of his art thanks to recent, more visible publications in English and other languages, such as the new English edition of Ghirri’s Kodachrome (2013) and the article by Maria Antonella Pelizzari in Artforum (2013), and thanks to a growing number of exhibitions, including those at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York and Los Angeles in 2011, 2014, namely La città, exhibiting early photographs by Ghirri. Further evidence of the growing visibility of Ghirri’s work is the major retrospective of his work, entitled Luigi Ghirri. Pensare per immagini, curated by Francesca Fabiani, Laura Gasparini and Giuliano Sergio, which was exhibited at the MAXXI museum in Rome from April 23 to October 27, 2013, and later in Brasil (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) – the first time for Ghirri’s work. This retrospective returned to Italy, precisely Reggio Emilia, home of the Ghirri archive is held, where it was exhibited in the 2014 Festival di Fotografia Europea.

Drawing on and contributing to the recent interest in Ghirri’s work, our research project has already attracted a great number of scholars, photographers, artists and writers whose work has been inspired and influenced by Ghirri’s photography and critical writing, and by some of his contemporaries, in particular by photographer Guido Guidi.

Born in Cesena in 1941, Guidi is one of the most influential

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Italian photographers of Ghirri’s generation. His work is currently being rediscovered (Veramente, a major retrospective of his work, was exhibited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris from January 16 to April 27, 2014). Ghirri’s aesthetics has had a deep impact on younger photographers, many of whom Guidi has taught in Venice or in Ravenna. Many of these artists have warmly responded to our project and joined our research network; these include writers Giorgio Falco, Pierluigi Tedeschi and Vittorio Ferorelli; photographers William Guerrieri, Sabrina Ragucci, Sisto Giriodi, Cesare Ballardini, Luca Nostri, Paolo Simonazzi, Pierluigi Tedeschi, Riccardo Varini, as well as New York artist Nancy Goldring and Iranian writer and photographer Mohammadreza Mirzaei. In most cases a generation younger, these artists variously draw on Ghirri’s and/or Guidi’s lesson to shape their own aesthetics, in an effort to explore their everyday reality and tackle issues of place, landscape, identity and belonging.

Ghirri’s legacy in contemporary Italian writing is no less important than his impact on contemporary photography, starting from his seminal collaboration with the writer Gianni Celati in the 1980s, as they both engaged in the exploration and narration of the Po valley. Their collaborative work resulted in projects such as Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia (Feltrinelli, 1986) and Il profilo delle nuvole (Feltrinelli, 1989), perhaps the most striking of Ghirri’s phototexts, where his images are introduced and accompanied

by Celati’s writing. Ghirri’s and Celati’s collaborative and catalyst work has given rise to a growing number of explorations of the exterior – both in photography and in writing ongoing.

One of the best examples of these collaborations between photography and writing, and of the legacy of Ghirri’s work, is Viaggio in un paesaggio terrestre (Diabasis, 2007), ‘a libro quattro mani’ by the photographer Vittore Fossati and the writer Giorgio Messori, both of whom deeply influenced by Ghirri. Celati’s work with Ghirri was instrumental in redirecting both contemporary photography and contemporary Italian narrative by steering it towards reportage and towards a greater opening to the visual and the photographic. No less important is the collaboration between Ghirri and Messori (1956-2006) on projects such as Atelier Morandi (Palomar, 1992), Ghirri’s work on Giorgio Morandi’s studios.

Both Fossati’s photography and Messori’s writing in Viaggio in un paesaggio terrestre draw on and take further Ghirri’s experimentation with the phototext and his lesson of inhabiting displacement, showing us how to feel at home even in a world that seems alien to us, and how to find peace in images, like Ghirri’s photographs, that at once reconnect us with the past, with our memories, and trigger our imagination. n

LUIGI GHIRRI. ENGELBERG, 1972, FROM KODACHROME (1970-1978) AND PAESAGGI DI CARTONE (1971-1974). © EREDI DI LUIGI GHIRRI

VITTORE FOSSATI. VAL D’ASTA, 1997. © VITTORE FOSSATI OPPOSITE PAGE: GHIRRI. CADECOPPI. DALLA STRADA PER FINALE EMILIA, 1985, FROM IL PROFILO DELLE NUVOLE (MILAN: FELTRINELLI, 1989). © EREDI DI LUIGI GHIRRI.

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PORTFOLIO

MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI

“PHOTOGRAPHY IS AN INSTRUMENT THAT CREATES EMOTIONS WITHOUT THE BARRIER OF PERFECTION. IT IS EXACTLY THROUGH IMPERFECTION THAT EMOTIONS EMERGE. I STARTED WITH POLAROID, BUT MY SEARCH FOR EMOTIONAL STRENGTH HAS BEEN GOING ON ALSO IN THE DIGITAL AGE. TO ME, PHOTOGRAPHY IS A MEANS TO DEVOUR REALITY AND CAPTURE THE MAGIC HIDDEN BEHIND IT.”

Maurizo Galimberti

ALL PHOTOS BY MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI. MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI USES FUJIFILM, WHICH HE DESCRIBES AS VERY ADAPTABLE FOR ALL ARTISTIC PROJECTS. TOP: ROMA - STUDY, 2012.

OSTUNI - STUDY, 2011.

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CYLINDRICAL COLOSSEUM, 2012.

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PORTFOLIO

PAOLA DI BELLO

THE VISUAL EXPEDIENT IS A METHOD TO EXPRESS THE OVERCOMING OF PRECONCEIVED VISIONS AND TO ESTABLISH A “SURPRISE” VISUAL THAT PRODUCES A DEEPER INSIGHT INTO PHENOMENA. I AM INTERESTED IN SHOWING A SECOND VERSION OF REALITY. Paola Di Bello

ALL PHOTOS BY PAOLA DI BELLO. TOP CONCRETE ISLAND, 2001.

OPPOSITE: L’ENIGMA DELL’ORA, 2002.

REAR WINDOW (CASA ANDREA), REGGIO EMILIA, 2011. .

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PORTFOLIO

MARZIA MIGLIORA

“PHOTOGRAPHY IS AN IMMENSE, INEXHAUSTIBLE SOURCE OF IDEAS, NOTES, MEMORIES- A METHOD TO MARK TIME AND ITS PASSAGE. IT IS THE SIGN OF THE PRESENT THAT LEAVES TRACES OF ITSELF. IN MY RESEARCH, PHOTOGRAPHY IS ALWAYS PRESENT AS A TIMELY LOOK AT THE SURROUNDINGS, THANKS TO THE ABILITY OF SYNTHESIS IN WHICH EVEN A SINGLE SHOT BECOMES A STORY.” Marzia Migliora

ALL PHOTOS BY MARZIA MIGLIORA. COURTESY GALLERIA LIA RUMMA MILANO /NAPOLI. TOP: INTERSECTING LINES, 2014. ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT. 17.7 X 78.75 INCHES. OPPOSITE: AQUA MICANS, IMAGE OF NINTH DAY OF CONTEMPORARY ART ORGANIZED

BY AMACI, AT GRANDE CRETTO BY ALBERTO BURRI, GIBELLINA (TP), 2013.

ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT. 43 X 71 INCHES.

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PORTFOLIO

MARINA BALLO CHARMET

ALL PHOTOS BY MARINA BALLO CHARMET. FROM THE SERIES IL PARCO/THE PARK. TOP: MILANO, PARCO SEMPIONE, #1, 2006.

PALERMO, LA FAVORITA, #93, 2008.

OPPOSITE: MILANO, PARCO SEMPIONE, #45, 2007.

ROMA, VILLA BORGHESE, #35, 2007.

PALERMO, LA FAVORITA, #28, 2008.

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“A SACRED SUBJECT IS THE EVERYDAY ONE – THE ‘ALWAYS SEEN’, ‘THE BACKGROUND NOISE IN OUR MINDS’. MY VIEW IS CHARACTERIZED BY A PERCEPTUAL MOBILITY, OUT OF FOCUS AND SIDEWAYS – SIMILAR TO A CHILDLIKE VISION, WHICH RECONSTITUTES A FLUCTUATING VISION, A ‘PERIPHERAL AWARENESS’, NOT CENTRALLY RELATED TO OUR PRECONCEPTIONS. A VISION OPPOSITE TO ANTHROPOCENTRICISM.”

Marina Ballo Charmet

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FRANK DITURI Images of motion express the ethereal

by David A. LEWIS

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he Italian photographer Frank Dituri believes in the power of art to move and engage us even now in our increasingly complex and jaded times. His photographs are transcendent. They take us beyond the here and now to mysterious, yet strangely familiar places. Dituri evokes these other places in poetic terms. His photographs function like Haiku, condensing as much visual information as possible within the concentrated visual field of a photograph.

Dituri’s photographs confirm his deeply held convictions about the essential mystery of life. Like the Romantics and Surrealists before him, he explores the interior realm of dreams and fantasy—a metaphysical place where memory and imagination supersede reason and where the laws of the physical universe do not determine our sense of time or space. Dituri describes his photography as a quest for a personal vision: For me photography is much more than a visual documentation; it is a personal journey, where dreams transcend reality, and material facts and the ethereal often merge. My subjects are neither coming nor going, but exist somewhere in the process. They are like lost souls in a recurring dream where silence is never broken and light and darkness co-exist, where fear and uncertainty lie deep in the shadows and the incomprehensible.

This vision began to form early in life, when he discovered not only photography but also the art of such painters as Giorgio de Chirico, Piero della Francesca and Edward Hopper. Collectively, their works impressed him with their expression of mystery powerfully conveyed through the use of occult perspective, dramatic lighting and staging—pictorial strategies that would later inform his own work. Dituri notes that, “Sometimes making a photograph is like taking a picture of something I remember seeing somewhere.” As an example, he recalls his early memory of seeing Giorgio De Chirico’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914). He remembers the painting’s eerie illumination, its stark light and disturbing shadows. Above all, he recalls being captivated by the enigmatic image of the little girl running alone with her hoop down an abandoned piazza. He relates: “I have spent many hours in Italian piazzas with my camera in search of this lonely silhouetted figure. The fact that I have never found this fleeting image is not important—allegorically it has become an intrinsic part of my psyche and embedded in the fiber of my work.” The image of a solitary figure was to become a recurring theme in Dituri’s work, one often associated with loneliness and isolation.

In early years, Frank Dituri focused his efforts on street pho-

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tography, and he much admired the work of Robert Frank and the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, but his own work was to move in another direction by the late 1970s. Eventually, he would reject the prevailing aesthetic premise of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” (which emphasized the instantaneous recognition of concrete fact). Dituri found this aesthetic too limiting. Instead, he sought to achieve a more psychologically complex understanding of time and space, one that accounts for internal, subconscious experience as well as the conscious response to external reality. Viewing time and space as a continuum that cannot be adequately expressed in terms of a single frozen instant, Dituri be-

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came determined to extend the fixed image of the still photograph into a temporally active space. Ultimately, he achieved this, in part, by employing a slow shutter speed, with which he creates blurring effects to suggest this ceaseless shifting back and forth in time and space. In some respects, his approach recalls that of the impressionists, who sought to convey the transitory aspects of reality through a blur of rapid brushstrokes. However, Dituri’s photography suggests not only the transitory aspects of nature, but also evokes intensely human responses to it. As such, it belongs to the romantic tradition of Friedrich and Turner, as well as to the later Symbolist painters and the Pictorialist photographers, for whom content must transcend ordinary experience.

Like the Pictorialists before him, Frank Dituri’s imagery is often atmospheric; it is also densely tonal. That density is purposeful. It reminds us that the photograph is a physical object that coexists with the imagery it encapsulates. The eye must penetrate that density, which like an enveloping fog amplifies the sensual experience of being in a place, of lingering there long enough to feel its warmth or chill, its humidity, its quality of light or encroaching darkness.

This purposeful lingering enlarges the emotional experience of viewing the photographs. It conjures up memories and associations with other experiences, and all the emotions attached to them, be they fear and trembling, serenity, or ecstatic joy. The density of Dituri’s photographs and the purposeful lingering required for viewing them could be described as matters of faith, the Biblical “substance of things hoped for,” a confirmation of the essential mystery of life and the artist’s “personal journey” to discover its meaning.

For much of his career Frank Dituri worked exclusively in black and white, but recently he has returned to color. Color

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provides alternative ways of representing, altering and creating space. In principle colors have temperature; warm colors tend to shift forward and cool colors recede into the background. Since at least the Renaissance, artists have knowingly used this principle to heighten the sense of illusory three-dimensional space. In such works as Entrance to Church, Italy (2010) and Open Door, Italy (2012) Dituri uses the psychological properties of color for expressive purposes. He employs color to disrupt our normal expectations of pictorial representation and to dramatically heighten our awareness of incongruence in space and time.

Consequently, such imagery become visionary— even surreal— rather than merely representational or documentary.

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The images in Frank Dituri’s photography present open-ended narratives. They can be described as allegorical or metaphorical. They are always about or of something other than what is literally portrayed. They evidence. They witness. They evoke. They explore the human condition and speak about the experience of life’s journey: of youth and maturity and the uncertainties confronted at each stage of life.

They are about the ordinary “in between” experiences that make up so much of our daily existence: waiting, crossing thresholds, and seeking sanctuary. Dituri’s images are often about human presence within nature: encounters with trees and forests, rivers and canals, and traveling on pathways through fields. A great many of his photographs depict seemingly mundane and uncomplicated subjects: an empty bench, a figure walking through a doorway, or a tree silhouetted against the sky. But always, there is the suggestion of something more: a memory to be recalled, a story to be told, a presence to be felt. It is this “something more,” that captures our attention and leaves us wanting to see more. n

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ALL PHOTOS BY FRANK DITURI. 1 BOY WITH DOG, 2010.

2 HAND AND CONFESSIONAL, 2011.

3 THE PRAYER, 2010.

4 ENTRANCE TO THE CHURCH, 2010.

5 GIOIELLA HEAD, 2010.

6 HAND OVER FIRE, 2010.

7 CORSO PARADISO, 1990.

8 ELVIO’S HAT, 2010.

9 LIGHT FROM ABOVE, 1995.

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PORTFOLIO

LIVIO MANCINI

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ALL PHOTOS BY LIVIO MANCINI, FROM HOW FAR IS THE HORIZON?, 2014. COURTESY MAKRO PRESS. 1 SCORRANO, SALENTO. SANTA DOMENICA. BALLO DELLA TARANTELLA 2 SCILLA, CALABRIA. FESTA PATRONALE DI SAN ROCCO 3 CASTRO MARINA, SALENTO. PUGLIA 4 ISOLA DI STROMBOLICCHIO, SICILIA 5 CASTRO MARINA, SALENTO. PUGLIA 6 CASTRO MARINA, SALENTO. PUGLIA

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“I GO BACK TO PLACES I KNOW, BUT THEY ARE CHANGING. I KNOW THESE PLACES, BUT THEY ARE NEW TO ME AT THE SAME TIME. SO I REALIZED THAT THE HORIZON IS A MENTAL LINE THAT I WAS STARTING TO VISUALIZE IN TERMS OF EXPERIENCE, IN TERMS OF KNOWLEDGE, DREAMS AND SO ON.” 6

Livio Mancini

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PORTFOLIO

MAURO BENEDETTI

“I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHING ROME, IT IS THE CITY I LIVE IN AND WHERE I EXPERIENCE THE DAILY TENSION BETWEEN THE ANCIENT BACKBONE AND THE NEED TO ACCOMMODATE THE CONTEMPORARY FLOW. ROME IS A CITY OF SUBTLE – BUT HARD TO DEAL WITH – CONTRASTS. STREETS DESIGNED AROUND THE HUMAN PACE THAT CANNOT STRETCH THEIR LENGTH AND WIDTH. AN ANCIENT CORE OF HISTORICAL SITES AND BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURE WALLED BY A CEMENTED RING OF ANONYMOUS PERIPHERIES. THE RICH AND THE POOR CO-EXISTING AT ARMS LENGTH, IGNORING EACH OTHER. TRAVELLERS EXPECTING A SCENT OF DOLCE VITA WHICH IS ALMOST LOST IN THE FUMES AND NOISES OF A ROUGH METROPOLITAN LIFE. WITH MY PHOTOGRAPHS I TRY TO CAPTURE THOSE FLEETING MOMENTS IN WHICH THE TWO WORLDS GET IN CONTACT JUST FOR A SECOND.”

Mauro Benedetti

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ALL IMAGES ARE TAKEN FROM ROME: STONE AND STORY (2012), BY MAURO BENEDETTI. THIS PAGE: FORO ROMANO, 2013; TEVERE, 2013.

OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: CAMPIDOGLIO, 2014; BOTTOM: HOLY WATER, 2014.

GIACAMO PUCCINI. COURTESY PUCCINI FOUNDATION.

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HOVERING IN HISTORY A March 2015 conference at the American Academy of Rome addresses the role of Photography in Italian Art History

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Italy has played in the process. n 1949, the French By reevaluating the relationship critic André Malraux between photography and art made an observation history from different points that suggested art hisof view, the Academy, with the tory has been bound panel, sought to brainstorm with photography since new criteria through which to the mid-19th century. As a reunderstand achievement and cent conference at the Amerivalue in the visual arts. can Academy in Rome shows, this is particularly true of Italy, Participants in Photography which has provided a rich reand Art History in Italy included pository for scholars seeking to Marco Andreani (Macula understand the history of art, Centro Internazionale di Culas well as for artists and photogtura Fotografica), Maria Francraphers responding to that hisesca Bonetti (Istituto Nazionale tory in new and different ways. per la Grafica, Rome), Martina MARIO GIACOMELLI. DA IL PITTORE BASTARI, 1992-1993.

In fact, Italy’s artistic patrimony Caruso (Independent Art Hishas also offered photographers torian, London and Rome), some of their most compelling Monika Faber (Photoinstitüt subjects, from Robert MacPherBonartes, Vienna), David Forson’s mid-19th century views of gacs (New York University), Rome’s ancient monuments, Francesco Jodice (Artist, Mito the Alinari brothers’ photolan), Maria Antonelli Pelizzari graphs of Michelangelo’s sculp(Hunter College, Department tures, to Luigi Ghirri’s photoof Art and Art History).

PARTICIPANTS OF THE AAR’S PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART HISgraphic renditions of paintings Dr. Andreani, presented a TORY IN ITALY CONFERENCE. PHOTO BY GIULIA BARRA. by the Bolognese modernist fascinating overview on the Giorgio Morandi. work of Mario Giacomelli, reAlthough longstanding and intimately intertwined, the prolifvealing the theoretical minefield in which discord reigns among ic, if complex, relationship between art history and photography Italian academics over post-war photography. Professor Forgacs’ in Italy is just beginning to be explored, particularly over the last address provoked an animated debate regarding the display of five years. This fragile relationship was the focus of a thought-prodocumentary photographs within the context of fine art. Dr. Harvoking conference at the American Academy of Rome. Organized ris, a New York University alumna, observed that the presentaby Dr. Lindsay Harris, Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge of tions, spanning from the Grand Tour to conceptual art, shared the School of Classical Studies at the Academy, it was the first ina striking number of common denominators, including shared ternational convening on this topic to take place in Italy. Photogranotions of empire and power. Francesco Jodice, a contemporary artist who primarily works with lens-based media, lent a practitiophy and Art History in Italy, held on March 5th, provided a rich and much-needed exchange between six scholars hailing from Italy, ner’s perspective to the proceedings, when he remarked on the the United States and United Kingdom. powerful potential of photography to carry, or highlight, hidden The one-day conference, conducted in English and Italian, narratives. gathered leading scholars of art history and photographic history, The impromptu conversations that started during coffee along with contemporary artists, to consider several perspectives: breaks, as well as the lively discussion at the dinner table that evehow photography has shaped the evolution of art history; how ning, indicates that Photography and Art History in Italy has sparked the study of art has influenced photographers’ choice of subject, the beginning of an important dialogue on the relationship bestyle, and technique; and, importantly, the highly unique role tween Italian photography and it’s impact on art history. n

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FLORENCE’S PHOTO TREASURE A brief look at Alinari, the hub of photography, its preservation and evolution from the dawn of the art itself

by Amanda SZTEIN

THE 15TH-CENTURY FACADE WHICH HAS BEEN THE HOME OF ALINARI SINCE 1852 TOP RIGHT: THE ALINARI BROTHERS; BOTTOM RIGHT: INSIDE THE ALINARI PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIO. ALL PHOTOS COURTESY FRATELLI ALINARI.

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lorence, the home of the Renaissance and its great masterpieces, is also the perhaps unlikely home of Italy’s national photography museum. Located in a 15th-century building called “delle Leopoldine” near Piazza Santa Maria Novella, along with the Fratelli Alinari Foundation for the History of Photography.

The Alinari National Museum of Photography is known for its collection of photography instruments and masterful portrayal of the evolution of photography. The collection includes original, historical photographs from the dawn of photography as an art –including works by many of Italy’s most renowned photogarphers.

Overall, the Alinari historical archive

consists of over 900,000 vintage prints.

The vast archives include all formats of photographic output – daguerreotypes, salted paper calotypes, bromide prints, albumen prints and charcoal prints.

Also preserved are many types of negatives: glass plates, paper negatives, autochromes and hand-coloured glass lantern slides. The archives have extensive conservation methods and tools to properly care for the rare and antique photographic formats.

The museum houses an equipment selection comprised of over 6,000 items, including antique cameras, lenses, period frames and containers. There are also 20 photographs recreated in relief by innovative collaboration with the Stamperia Braille of the Tuscany – photos that can be experienced via touch.

The Alinari brothers, Leopoldo, Romualdo and Giuseppe, who were passionate about the “new” art of photography and founded a studio in 1852.

Leopoldo’s son and savvy entrepreneur Vittorio Alinari transformed the business practice into Italy’s most important photography firm at the turn of the century. The Alinari family continues the tradition to this day with the museum, historical archives, and foundation.

Established in 1985, the Museum is appropriately located in the former studio where the historical photographic techniques were first developed and utilized as a cutting-edge technology. Beyond techniques and prints, the Museum also investigates the evolution of photography as a method of preservation and communication. n

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PORTFOLIO

ROCHELLE CHEEVER

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“PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE ART OF STORYTELLING WITHOUT WORDS; GOOD PHOTOGRAPHY NOT ONLY INCORPORATES ALL THE OBVIOUS TECHNICAL SKILLS, BUT ALSO, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, IT CONVEYS EMOTION.” Rochelle Cheever ALL IMAGES ARE TAKEN FROM A ROMANTIC JOURNEY, BY ROCHELLE CHEEVER (2015).

THIS PAGE: SAN MARCO, VENEZIA – REFLECTION; MAGICAL CAPRI. GIACAMOOPPOSITE PUCCINI.PAGE, COURTESY PUCCINI FOUNDATION. TOP: LAGO DI COMO.

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LENS ON WOMEN AND POLITICS Two historical examples include Marie Sophie and Ghitta Carrell

by Nicoletta LEONARDI

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ittle attention has been given so far both to women photographers and the representation of women in photographs in Italy. More research needs to be done, for instance, on the relationship between women, photographs and politics. In the span of this article I will look at two significant examples pertaining to this vast and promising topic, in the hope that it will attract more scholarly and curatorial interest in the future.

During the late Risorgimento, photography was often used as an ideological tool and a mass instrument of propaganda both by the expanding Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and its supporters and the anti-Piemontese forces (the Papal States, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Austrians). This was not only the case with Garibaldi, whose heroic portraits widely circulated both in Italy and abroad, but also with photographs that depicted women.

In 1862 the Papal States were shaken by an unprecedented scandal: Marie Sophie of Baviera, ex-queen of Naples and sister of empress of Austria Sisi, appeared nude in some obscene photographs, intent in onanistic activities while surrounded by cardinals, monsignors, papal guards and even the Pope. The images were fake: they were photomontages produced for political reasons. Marie Sophie was in exile in Rome with her husband Francis II of Bourbon after the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was defeated in February 1861 by Victor Emanuel II’s troops. To avoid bloodshed in Naples, Francis and Marie Sophie, along with their army, retreated to the strong coastal fortress of Gaeta where the Piedmontese forces lay siege for four months. It was in this last stand of the Bourbons that

Marie Sophie, who was just 19 years old, gained her reputation as the “warrior queen” and the “heroine of Gaeta” that stayed with her for the rest of her life. She tirelessly rallied her soldiers, she shared her food with them, she cared for their wounds, she dared attackers to come within range of the fortress cannon. She was worshipped unto idolatry by her men. Her passionate adherence to the cause of the Bourbons generated an almost cult-like admiration among the so called “legitimists”, who resisted the waves of revolution that shook Europe in the mid 1800s and led to the fall of absolutism and the rise of constitutional government in the continent. The cult of Marie Sophie among legitimists both resulted in and was generated by a wide production and circulation of photographic portraits of the ex-queen.

The obscene photographs depicting Marie Sophie were allegedly commissioned and circulated by pro-Piedmontese agitators operating in Rome. The city was itself menaced by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia’s southern expansion that led to the unification of Italy in 1861 and to the annexation of the Papal States in 1870. Rome was the hotbed of legitimist soldiers and adventurers gathered around the ex-king and the ex-queen of Naples, who set up a government in exile that enjoyed diplomatic recognition by most European states for a few years as still the legitimate government of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The photographs were clearly meant at discrediting Marie Sophie’s international reputation as a young and brave heroine and a symbol of anti-revolutionary resistance.

In his Ricordi di Roma (1870), French poet and literary critic Louis Delatre, who was a society habitué, dedicated several pages to the ex-queen. A correspon-

THAT SO MANY PORTRAITS OF MARIE SOPHIE WERE AVAILABLE ON THE MARKET COMES AS NO SURPRISE. BESIDES BEING THE CELEBRATED HEROINE OF GAETA, SHE HAD GREAT PASSION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY dent in Rome for the French press who criticized the Papal government to the point of being expelled from the city in 1863, Delaitre describes Marie Sophie as an extremely unconventional woman who was keen to inappropriate behavior. According to Delaitre, the deposed young queen did not realize that her situation demanded discretion, silence and withdrawal from public life. Quite on the contrary, she chose publicity and clamor, exposing herself to ridicule, attracting scorn. Adopting what was perceived as an inappropriately masculine (thus scandalous) behavior, she smoked, she often went hunting, she practiced fencing, every night she went out alone in her tilbury, riding her two frisky horses around the Pincio. She also loved gun shooting, a hobby she practiced in the garden of the Quirinale, where she lived, pointing her weapon against all sorts of objects and animals, including cats.

Delaitre also mentions the fact that Marie Sophie was very popular and that her photographic portraits were so much sought after that she was overwhelmed

PHOTOGRAPHIC / PHOTOGENIC

by photographers’ requests for obtaining permission to reproduce her likeness.

And because on top being unsuitably extravagant and masculine she was also quite foppish, she would always agree.

The result was a huge number of portraits in which she appeared in different guises: as an artilleryman, a sailor, an amazon, a nun, a zuoave, a bourgeois lady; with a gun, a crucifix, a horsewhip, a fan.

That so many portraits of Marie Sophie were available on the market comes as no surprise. Besides being the celebrated heroine of Gaeta, she had great passion for photography, which she shared with her sister Sisi. The Empress collected photographs of beautiful women which she kept in an album. Among the more than one hundred photographs of female beauties owned by Sisi, there were lots of portraits of Marie Sophie.

During the Fascist dictatorship, a Jewish woman from Hungary living in Italy became the most sought after studio portraitist of the regime’s gerarchi, the Italian aristocracy, the highest ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, the entrepreneurs and industrialists from the northern regions, as well as prominent intellectuals who adhered to Fascism.

Born in 1899, Ghitta Carrel moved to Italy in 1924 after attending a photography class for women in Bucarest, where she learned the ways of late pictorialism.

During the 1930s, she continued working with a reminiscently pictorialist ap-

proach, strongly retouching her pictures in order to obtain the flattering effects of official portraits. An extremely successful professional photographer, Carrell gained national notoriety thanks to the portrait of a young balilla she shot in 1926, which was used for a Fascist propaganda poster displayed in public places all over the country. Shortly after, she became the photographer of the Italian royal family and portrayed Benito Mussolini. It soon became almost a social obligation for members of the regime’s social, cultural and political elites to have their portrait taken by her.

In her studio close to Piazza del Popolo in Rome, Carrell photographed Edda and Galeazzo Ciano, Pope Pius XII, Alberto Savinio, Giovanni Papini, members of the houses of Gonzaga, Borghese, Visconti, Diaz, Colonna. Through her masterly retouch, she produced images that came close to the ideal beauty, nobleness and heroism that her sitters aspired to. Her photographs, carefully tailor made for Fascist ideology, are indeed an extraordinary document of the ideals, desires and ambitions of the regime.

They also served as extremely efficient instruments of political persuasion and propaganda. It was due to her affiliations with the hegemonic class and particularly with Mussolini, that Carrell did not have to face racial persecution. When the racial laws were promulgated in Italy in 1938, she was indeed protected by the

65

regime and continued working, though more privately and at a slower pace. After the Second World War, Carrell became the photographer of Italy’s new ruling political class, the Cristian Democrats, until she retired in Israel, where she died in 1972. Before leaving Italy, she donated all her negatives and part of her prints to the 3M Foundation in Milan, which is open to the public for consultation. n

LEFT AND MIDDLE: GHITTA CARRELL. CONTESSA ARRIVABENE, 1934.

LA PRINCIPESSA MARIA JOSÈ, 1934.

GELATIN SILVER PRINT. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESTY FONDAZIONE 3M, MILAN, ITALY.

RIGHT: UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER. MARIA SOFIA DI BORBONE (WITTELSBACH 1841-1925), QUEEN OF THE TWO SICILIES, 1869.

PHOTO COURTESY FOTOTECA STORICA NAZIONALE ANDO GILARDI.

66 ROME/NY DIARY

EYE ON THE GALLERIST An interview with Mario Peliti

by Ludovica ROSSI PURINI

M

ario Peliti (Rome, 1958) is an architect by training, is an editor and communications consultant.

He was the director of the Galleria Minima Peliti Associati from 1995 to 2002, an exhibition space of only 23 square meters within the Palazzo Borghese, dedicated to art photography. In the span of seven years, the small gallery has shown 43 exhibitions presenting the photography of Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Sebastião Salgado, Gabrile Basilico, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Mario Giacomelli, Mary Ellen Mark and Bert Stern, to name a few of the most famous. He created the “European Publishers Award for Photography,” a contest sponsored by six publishers (of Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Spain), now in its 21st edition.

He oversaw the publication of an additional 100 volumes (see www.pelitiasocieatieditore.it), developing a rather thorough knowledge of contemporary Italian and European photography, and consequently a rapport with the most representative artists from the past decades. He created the Reportage – Altri Festival (for which he appointed Toni Capuozzo the director) and coordinated the 2009 and 2010 editions, taking on the additional responsibility of the exhibition program.

In 2013, along with Paola Stacchini Cavazza, he opened the Galleria del Cembalo, dedicated to photography and its relationship with other forms of artistic expression, also within the Palazzo Borghese. In 2006, he began a total photographic reconnaissance of Venice.

LRP: The great masters of Italian photography in this moment are very well-known abroad; what caused this phenomenon?

PELITI: Exclusively due to their talent. In my work I collaborate every day with collectors, gallery owners, publishers and curators of every country, and when something good suddenly appears, or an original idea floats through the air, we all breathe it in simultaneously and a common feeling emerges. When the talent is there, it emerges and establishes itself.

LRP: Your optimistic consideration about the establishment of talent spontaneously leads to a question about the relationship between great Italian photographers and their home country of Italy.

PELITI: Extraordinarily, Italian artists emerge despite Italy. I

love to say (but this is an old story that echoes that no prophet is respected in its own home) that an Italian becomes famous in Italy only if he was already famous abroad, specifically in France.

Whether it be illustrator Mattotti or the photographers Giacomelli or Basilico or the architect Renzo Piano, we can only conclude that the reason for this phenomenon lies mainly in the fact that others pay more attention to what we create and those same Italian artists learned to sell themselves abroad, being certain of the inability to entrust their fate to public Italian institutions.

LRP: If instead we look at the next generation after these grand masters, what type of observations can we make?

PELITI: Even today’s generation of 40- and 50-year olds have chosen to go abroad to take the next steps down their career paths.

Paolo Pellegrin and Alex Majoli, with the entry to Magnum, Luca Campigotto with his move to America and the same Paolo Ventura in America has brought out his most original work.

The same discussion applies for the most interesting youth, take for example Beatrice Pediconi who has already presented her work in important museums and private institutions abroad.

LRP: What characterizes talent in the arts?

PELITI: In my opinion, the trait that distinguishes the artist is a true and real pain that drives him or her to express it in no other way but art. Campigotto calls this a defect and refers both to a sort of melancholy and a concealed and more profound artistic meaning. Clearly this intention can not immediately be recognized by external empathy but the artist cannot do anything but live it and express it. It is the duty of a good art dealer to understand and present the intentional meaning without ambiguity. Ambiguity in art never pays.

LRP: Public Italian institutions and art. How do you see the future of culture in a period characterized by continuous budget cuts?

PELITI: The situation is very serious and you can’t even accuse the State in a simple way because I realize that having sufficient funds required to fund the restoration of a Michelangelo drawing or to purchase a photographic collection is not even imaginable.

I can at least stress, with specific reference to contemporary art, that the opening of new museums has confirmed the attitude of investing more in the home of the artwork rather than the art-

Mario Peliti. Photo by Alessandro Albert.

ROME / NY DIARY 67

“THE TRAIT THAT DISTINGUISHES THE ARTIST IS A TRUE AND REAL PAIN THAT DRIVES HIM OR HER TO EXPRESS IT IN NO OTHER WAY BUT ART.... THE ARTIST CANNOT DO ANYTHING BUT LIVE IT AND EXPRESS IT. IT IS THE DUTY OF A GOOD ART DEALER TO UNDERSTAND AND PRESENT THE INTENTIONAL MEANING WITHOUT AMBIGUITY. “ work it is intended to house. A museum can consist of collections in a physical space lacking personality, but a museum that is simply a building without a collection is simply a kunsthalle. This is because there is no doubt about the fundamental objective of conservation in a museum.

LRP: How does this relate specifically to photography museums?

PELITI: I am against the idea of a photography museum because it does nothing but put those who use the same medium together regardless of the artist’s intentions. For example, I would find it more logical that the work of an artist like Gabriele Basilico, being able to fit into various types of collections, would find itself inside a museum of contemporary art for some theme or in an archive of documentation of territory or in a museum of architecture for other reasons. But for it to be in the same photography museum alongside photos by Helmut Newton does not make any sense, given that the only reason for this choice would be just to put artists who work in the same medium together. I am not alone in this opinion; the Museum of Modern Art in New York has a photography department, and the Beaubourg Museum acquires photography in relation to the contemporary art collections exhibited in it.

LRP: Returning to the question of talented young photographers, is there still anyone in Italy who dedicates themselves to social photography?

PELITI: The problem is that social commentary is always the re-

sult of a condition of political passion that does not seem to exist in Italy today. Or rather there is, so to speak, an intellectualization of political passion that lives with a photograph which, in the past years has become more introspective and lacks a deep political idealism because our contemporary society provides fewer stimuli than before. To clarify this concept, an example is the recent work of two young photographers, Tommaso Bonaventura and Alessandro Imbriaco, which relates to the pervasiveness of the Mafia through images that do not directly detail the strength of the criminal association but instead reconstruct its imminence in an indirect way that requires the caption to understand the meaning.

The civil passion in this case is pushed to the maximum limit of conceptualization, but is no less strong than what was displayed in the extraordinary work of Letizia Battaglia, which exposed the mafia.

LRP: A few days ago I read an interview with visionary director Peter Greenway who claimed that being able to watch does not mean being able to see and that despite the overexposure of images our era has lost the ability to read and interpret them. Do you agree?

PELITI: It is very true that we analyze what the world has to offer less and less. I love to use the example of listening to music.

Before, when it was not possible to reproduce a performance, the listener’s ear was trained to express their aesthetic judgement.

This happens even today with images: we have an enormous amount of visual information but we know less about how to process them. I am an undisguised nihilist and I cannot disagree with Greenway. n

68 CONTEMPORARY ART

PHOTOGRAPHERS APPARENT

by Gianluca MARZIANI

I

talian photography never disappoints: years pass, and new names are added to the landscape of talent that is constantly emerging.

The photographic language belongs to our iconographic tradition, showing health and innovation, aesthetic elegance and pictorial quality. When your roots start with the Bragaglia brothers, Luigi Ghirri and Franco Fontana, Mario Giacomelli and Gabriele Basilico, Guido Guidi, Massimo Vitali and Olivo Barbieri, you know that something magical circles the Italian scene, deeply rooted in 14th-century painting, the Renaissance and the Baroque, Canaletto and Futurism, the Metaphysics and Mario Schifano, Italian photography is always interwoven with our painting tradition, with the colors of our landscape, our uncommon light, the aesthetic of ruins and the Impressionist quality of our marvelous sites. Italy is majestic mountains and crystal clear seas, soft countrysides and historical cities, medieval towns and dreamy islands, ghostly plains and overhanging coasts... a country that has painting in its DNA, a patchwork of perspectives that guides the gaze beyond the obvious appearance, discovering plausible but non-definitive angles. Italy is the dizziness of the Mediterranean and the sculptural solidity of history, a crossed alchemy of lights and prospects that asks for a photographic completion, a pictorial moment to be captured in the print. Note the names that follow, representing the right balance between a sense of history and contemporary focus. They have gained experience looking at the world as an iconographic revelation. They don’t have a documentarian perspective, but try to capture what comes before the “document”, the unexpected, the sacredness of everyday life, the vertigo of the senses.

FRANCESCO BOSSO Many expert eyes point to the talent of Francesco Bosso. His conception of the scenic landscape has the harmonious spirit of romantic painters, such as Caspar David Friedrich, metabolized and sized on the weight of contemporary photography. Bosso prefers the black and white module, made of multiple variations of gray and intermediate tonal scales. His expression exists in a picturesque mode, inside nature’s powerful and uncontaminated landscape. His lengthy and methodical visual is the product of long waits in chosen locations, of precious materials in which to print, of a technique made of infinitesimal calibrations. The result of these cycles is a suspended voyage, a gaseous stadium of the gaze, pure abstraction in the power of the path taken. Bosso seems to design with rarefied atmospheres, giving density to the air, to the sky, to the water’s surface... His locations are transformed into an alien limbo, void of human presence, a floating meta-world with suspended reality.

LEFT: FRANCESCO BOSSO. ARTIC ARROW, ICELAND. 2013.

RIGHT: GIUSEPPE RIPA. LIMINAL.

GIUSEPPE RIPA The consistent rigor of black and white continues with Ripa, modulated through full, vibrant ranges on the end of a mutant light that shapes the contours. It is the light that changes the rules of the game and expresses the form’s code, the ambiguity between real and imaginary. A light that is the embryo of the image, inexplicable and almost unconscious, soaked by the night and ancestral lighting. Ripa takes photography to its archetype, to a universal purity, by going back to a pure, original light, which is abstract, subjective, retinal. It seems to say that the specific sites don’t really count, but the eye, the cognitive approach, the emotional disposition: and all of this means to photograph an image with the imagination, remembering that reality doesn’t exist but only a multiplicity of interpretations of what is real. Every cycle of the artist is a narrative history, a landscape film divided into autonomous but sequential chapters, as if a surreal editing had imagined the steps of a dreamed and fragmented journey, similar to our eye when it is confused by the stimuli of a metropolis in the morning.

CONTEMPORARY ART

CARLO D’ORTA. INSTALLATION VIEW, LONDON, 2012.

CARLO D’ORTA Now we are in the methodical purity of color, within figurative research that uses a full range of possibilities in architectural terms, playing on contrasts and volumes, almost pulsing the elements of a building or an urban skyline. D’Orta reaffirms the centrality of a look that locates details: “Biocities” is the confirmation, a work about the contemporary architectural aspects in the production cycle of the functional city. The artist’s eye thinks by modular patterns, similar to a painting created with minimal, geometrical strokes and a vibrant chromatic scale. An imprint that has reached the volumetric form, with modular installations in which the original photo is decomposed into its constituent volumes, to the point of reinventing the photographic structures in truly three-dimensional terms. These are the ideas that contribute to the evolution of the language, offering insights beyond the simple aesthetic function, capable of making us see the obvious with a touch of the unexpected.

EROS DE FINIS A lot of interior black and white but also colors full of emotions can be found in the figurative pictorialism that inspires the moral sense of De Finis. His images catapult us into abnormal, emotionally strong, narrative environments where the energies seem to always be hiding, looking for a secret dialogue with the viewer. De Finis creates a scenic structure in which the subjects belong to spaces larger than themselves, to remember the value of existence in an ever-changing landscape. You immediately feel the resistance of ancestral values, between folk tradition and sacrificial cult, an emphatic link with the cycle of nature to which man has always belonged. The photographs have an open wound feel, with strong contrasts: a black that contains absolute darkness and a white that blinds and burns. De Finis’ aesthetic speaks, basically, of energy in action, a realism so explosive that it becomes almost abstract, intangible as a gust of wind that blows without showing.

EROS DE FINIS. FAR LEFT: VAE VICTIS. TOP: RICOG. LEFT: SCENA.

69

70 CONTEMPORARY ART

ABOVE: EROS DE FINIS. NEMO. RIGHT: CIOGLI. PROJECTION #2.

ANTONELLO & MONTESI Philippe Antonello and Stefano Montesi come from cinema (the first as a set photographer, the latter as a celebrity photographer) and go back to the language of moving images in their research on the evolution of the medium. They were among the first to experiment with 3D technology in photography, creating large full-length portraits to be observed with the classic glasses with colored lenses. In their path they search for subjects with strong semantic characters to model the technology within a solid concept with artistic autonomy. The final result is shocking and impressive: static and dynamic blend together and change the scenic appearance, recreating with still pictures what Gravity did with 3D film. The subject changes the perception of space and the picture takes on a new linguistic commitment, still embryonic but ready to explode into tomorrow’s expressive geographies.

CIOGLI We finish with an artist whose photography conceptually dissects painting, color and sound. CIOGLI, a visual artist and experimental composer, has developed software (Paint Sound) that opens new boundaries of perception. His method translates environmental sounds in dynamic images/works, where the graphic comes to

life through the color corresponding to each sound. The photography exists but is not seen, it is contained in the definition of color as a new skin with which to dress a painting but also an object, a building or any real form. The sound stimulates color, with the latter completing the form by giving it a sartorial chromatic quality.

It does not appear as a shot but the photograph does exist: on the one hand, as an interior element, the principle of elaboration of the fragment; on the other, as a document that sets out the steps and certifies the illusion of colors, showing, through the press, what the software has made fluid and impalpable. n

LITERATURE

71

THE LOOK OF THIS HEAVEN CHARLES H. TRAUB, DOLCE VIA: ITALY IN THE 1980S. DAMIANI, 2014.

by Laura GIACALONE

I

n the age of digital photography, it always feels good to plunge back into the bright vividness of traditional film, capable, like no other medium, of capturing the bittersweet sense of long-gone

days.

It is enough to browse through the pages of Dolce Via – a remarkable collection of shots taken by New York photographer Charles H. Traub in 1980s Italy – to breath the impalpable atmosphere of those years. After the economic and political crisis of the late 1970s, the country was then enjoying a second “economic miracle”. The rise of consumerism, the increase of leisure time and a new culture of entrepreneurship were prompting a rediscovered sense of individualism and widespread hedonism.

Traub was there, with his Plaubel Makina 67 and rolls of Kodak color negative film, to immortalize this cultural change. Rome, Naples, Venice, Capri, Taormina… Nothing escapes his keen gaze. Far from any cliché or postcard-like representation, he leaves the monuments in the background and focuses on the human side of the Italian street life, capturing the mute dialogue between living beings and inanimate objects, between the glory of the past and an unfathomable present.

As the book title suggests, Italy is no longer the place for Fellini’s Dolce Vita.

The Trevi Fountain where Anita Ekberg took her legendary dip and called out for “Marcello!” 20 years earlier, more prosaically, becomes a place for passersby to rest and refresh themselves, and is used throughout the book more “as a kind of rhythmic device”, “a figure of punctuation” – says Traub – than as an iconic subject.

Attracted to the random, fascinating

geometries of the bodies, he takes pictures of the crowds, and there he finds the solitude of the grumpy old man, the suspicious gaze of the young lady, the peaceful bliss of the reading woman.

He catches spontaneous gestures of intimacy, couples kissing or hugging on a bench, by the sea, in a half-deserted square. People rarely look at the camera.

They are often caught in a moment of

THEIR BODIES ARE FAR FROM BEING PERFECT, RATHER EXPRESSING THE PECULIAR MIX OF DECADENCE AND BEAUTY TYPICAL OF MOST ITALIAN LANDSCAPES.

distraction. They gaze at something out of the frame, which is only left to the viewer’s imagination. Their poses are often clumsy; they bend down, lean forward, touch their feet, or are seen from the back. And when they look at the camera, they stare at us provocatively, an almost defiant smile hovering on their lips. Their bodies are far from being perfect, rather expressing the peculiar mix of decadence and beauty typical of most Italian landscapes.

In consonance with the pervasive hedonism of the time, as critic Max Kozloff points out in the Foreword, Traub’s street-life pictures bring out “the pleasure of the senses and of the flesh”. Young

people in bathing suits or light summer dresses are indeed among his favorite subjects; they dominate their world with insolent vitality, powerful colors emerging from placid backgrounds.

The natural configuration of human bodies creates interesting games of perspective, as is evident in the photographer’s “striped shots”, where the intertwining of natural light, material artifacts and human actors gives life to new subterranean geometries and connections.

Whether it is a series of watermelon slices on display or the yellow dresses of two little girls, the chromatic quality of everyday objects stands out from the Italian urbanscape.

The motivation behind his pictures is made explicit in the final dialogue between the street photographer and his muse, written by dramatist Luigi Ballarini.

Filtering through the contrast between light and shadow, youth and age, sacred and profane, is the idea of an impossible resurrection: “Italy looked to me like a dystopia whose inhabitants acted as if they were living in heaven”, says Traub.

It is exactly this inborn indolence, this combination of “fatalism and total inaction”, that still seems to permeate the Italian way of life.

In his fresco of the 1980s Italy, Traub definitively meets the challenge of revealing “the uncanny” in apparently ordinary situations, re-framing the world he saw before him and giving a fresh insight into the soul of this enduringly appealing country. n

72 FASHION

FOUR FASHION PHOTO GREATS

by Barbara ZORZOLI

S

ince the beginning of the 20th century, photography has been an extremely successful means to promote fashion all over the world. Italian fashion photographers have excelled thanks to their daring portraits and innovative campaigns because they “speak” the language of fashion. Without the help of the photographers, the fashion world would be silent. Below are a group of leaders that have built and are still building the image of fashion.

TOSCANI

BARTO

Oliviero TOSCANI (born in Milan in 1942) is one of the most influential figures in Italian photography. Author of the scandalous and shocking early campaigns of Benetton and other Italian houses, he took up photography following the steps of his father, Fedele Toscani, who was a photo reporter for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. After obtaining his diploma in Zurich, he started working with different magazines, including Elle, Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Toscani’s work conveys layers, second meanings, and the message is often related to modern society’s problems and plagues, or taboos and prejudices, from anorexia to racism.

Gio BARTO (born in Milan in 1962) started working as an assistant with the famous Ugo Mulas, his greatest teacher, who taught him the art and the passion for photography. At 22 he started working by his own in the fields of fashion and beauty, collaborating in Milan for important magazines such as Vogue, Harper Bazar, Cosmopolitan and other Italian magazines such as Linea Italiana, Amica, Anna, Grazia, Gioia and many more.

LUNARDI FERRARI

Graziano FERRARI (born in the province of Parma, in 1949) discovered his love for photography the first time he entered the darkroom. He worked for an advertising agency where he created the photographs for important advertising campaigns, and finally opened his own business. In July 1974, he photographed fashion collections on the runway for the first time: The High Fashion in Rome. He realized that the only way to take beautiful pictures of the models on the runway was to use a long telephoto lens on a level with the models. He took a lightweight aluminum stepladder with him to the next collection, and was soon copied by his colleagues. He remains, however, the boss of the collections on the runway.

Since 1946 the lens of Giovanni LUNARDI (born and raised in Parma in 1937) has graced the cover of more than 4,500 magazines around the world. Giovanni has photographed many of the world’s most beautiful women, captured striking landscapes and framed unique commercial shots. n

FASHION 73

5 2

4 1

3

7

6

5

8

1 PASQUALE DE ANTONIS. SORELLE BOTTI (MODEL), 1947. 2 FEDERICO GAROLLA. TWO MODELS IN VALENTINO, ROME, 1958. 3 FEDERICO GAROLLA. IVY NICHOLSON (MODEL) WEARING GATTINONI, ROMA, 1954. 4 MARIO TURSI. CLAUDIA CARDINALE IN VAGHE STELLE DELL’ORSA WEARING GALITZINE AND A CLEMENTE CARTONI HAT. COURTESY CINETECA NAZIONALE. 5 ELIZABETH TAYLOR WEARING FONTANA, 1954. COURTESY FONDAZIONE MICOL FONTANA. 6 PIERLUIGI PRATURLON. SCENE FROM LA DOLCE VITA, 1960. COURTESY CINETECA NAZIONALE. 7 REGINA RELANG. MODEL AT THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM WEARING FONTANA, 1952. MÜNCHNERSTADTMUSEUM, SAMMLUNG FOTOGRAFIE, ARCHIVRELANG. 8 UGO MULAS. LUNGO I NAVIGLI, 1958. © EREDI UGO MULAS. COURTESY ARCHIVIO UGO MULAS, MILAN – GALLERIA LIA RUMMA, MILANO/NAPOLI.

Style on the Tiber Rome’s MAXXI Museum highlighted Italy’s rich fashion design past with the exhibition Bellissima: Italy and High Fashion 1945-1968.

During the post-war period, all aspects of Italian culture – especially cinema and fashion – were re-imagined and rebuilt as if on a clean slate after World War II. Rome was nicknamed “Hollywood on the Tiber” at the time, thanks to the scene surrounding the actors, such as Lana Turner, Ingrid Bergman and Ava Gardner, who were filming and socializing in Italy. The exhibition’s curators Maria Luisa Frisa, Stefano Tonchi and Anna Mattirolo, sought to connect fashion of the era to contemporaneous artistic and cinematic innovations. The show presented 80 iconic outfits on a long undulating kind of runway, separated into different themes: daytime, artsy, black & white, gala evening, cocktail, cinema, space and exoticism. Alongside the clothing, elaborate jewelry and accessories complemented the clothing designs, including many from main sponsor Bulgari.

“Looking at the period from 1945 to 1968 means describing an intrinsically Italian atmosphere, a stylistic and productive identity, which underwent sweeping changes-from the development of high fashion right after the war to the birth or ready-to-wear fashion in the late 1960’. In those years, the relationship between art and fashion was fluid, with a constant trading of ideas between the two.” said Giovanni Melandri, president of the Fondazione Maxxi. n

74 PHOTOGRAPHY

LIGHT ON

NewYork

The City as a landscape, its roughness smoothed out through the photographer’s art – acknowledging the sky (not far) above its myriad ceilings and spires. photography by Mauro BENEDETTI

75

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78 FACE FILE

face file

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI

by Molly ROSSI

S

ome faces suit their era, some faces seem to transcend reality for the moment before they are forgotten, and some faces, regardless of time and age, are simply unforgettable. Isabella Rossellini is a woman of many faces, and not one of them is easily forgotten. Her enduring beauty, timeless elegance, dynamic talent and wit, unbridled creativity, and genuine honesty make her a living embodiment of two classic ideals: that of the refined, graceful Italian woman, and the driven, unrelenting American woman.

“I set high goals for myself, I seek perfection, dream of exotic faraway places. But ultimately, what I long for isn’t far away at all. It’s in my own backyard. Imperfection charms me, familiar things move me... a celebration of what we have, instead of what we long for. That for me, is glamour.” Says Rosselini, a model, actress, filmmaker, writer, science enthusiast, UNICEF Ambassador and mother.

From the moment she was born into a family of “film royalty”, Isabella did not have to look far for glamour. As daughter of parents Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rosselini, one of the most legendary unions of the last century, her life became noteworthy from its inception. However, as she proved to be a remarkable film talent in her own right, it is striking that she never sought to reject or separated herself from her parent’s legacy the way many famous offspring have before her and since. Instead, she has lead the celebration of their legacy with a confident dignity that proves she has never shaken the inherent Italian value of familigia. Her recent accomplishments include the book In the name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Spirits: Remembering Roberto Rossellini (2006), which was published as a written tribute alongside her film, My Dad Is 100 Years Old. As a mother, she has made an immense effort to raise her children close to her twin sister’s family.

There was a time when Rosselini’s heritage was more of a hindrance to her own career than a celebrated piece of her own artistic legacy. She once admitted to Interview magazine that her late entry into the family business, at age 31, was partially affected by the pressure of being compared to her mother’s onscreen image. However, she bravely entered the field as an adult, carving a meaningful career by choosing challenging films with consequential themes with stunning performances, such as her role in 1987’s Blue Velvet, for which she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. In 2011, she was selected to be the Rossellini was announced as the President of the Jury for the 61st Berlin Film Festival.

As an actress and model, she can now claim a decades-long career of success, such as her unprecedented tenure as the face of Lancome in the 90’s. Proving again to be more than a pretty

“IMPERFECTION CHARMS ME, FAMILIAR THINGS MOVE ME” face, her statements about the somewhat controversial end of her contract resounded powerfully with the public. “The only thing that made me suffer, and it was very painful, was losing the Lancôme contract…I thought that the cosmetics industry finally had the opportunity to break this taboo about women in their forties not being beautiful—that narrow idea of beauty!” she said. In the end, this event was just another chapter in a lengthy and dynamic career.

One of the most interesting accomplishments of Rosselini in recent years was her 2007 enrollment in Hunter College to study Animal Behavior, which she completed concurrently with her guest role on Tina Fey’s NBC smash 30 Rock. Around this time, the Sundance Channel and Robert Redford commissioned her for an educational series about animal behavior. What resulted was the popular online series Green Porno (2008), which Rosselini, writes, directs, produces and stars in. In 2013, the follow up program Mammas (2013), which explores motherhood within animal life, debuted to rave reviews. Her career as been on of fearless risk, and these recent adventures have paid off tremendously.

“I felt I shouldn’t be doing a job that takes advantage of your beauty. In fact, I didn’t even think that I was beautiful.” Rosselini once admitted, reflecting on her early career.

Though she never sought to be a role model, her strength, motivation, and endurance has outshined even her own beauty in forming her legacy, which continues to grow and transform as she transforms and, and even destroys, the boundaries that define what it means to be a beautiful woman. n

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