Landscape - Ipotesi 35
As it often happens with works clean and pure, even the photographs of the Giovanni Guadagnoli do run the risk to be underestimated. Yet just observe them with the attention they deserve to realize the complex conceptual reflection that precedes its realization. Those serene landscapes, in which anonymous characters move and therefore unidentifiable, hide the subtle mystery that drifts not so much in the places as in the same ambit of the photographic medium. We live in a world where physical boundaries have expanded but within them very different conceptions and sensations cohabit, like the culture from which they are originated. It’s therefore inevitable that the photo will end up dealing with ambiguity and relativism in order to accept them not as limitations but as valuable tools of critical inquiry to investigate on its ability to observe and then resume reality. Guadagnoli addresses the problem immerging himself fully in the presentation but using it with a critical detachment deliberately alienating. His landscapes are seemingly serene: the rippled surface of the water of a couple that submerges, the scenery observed by a group of people photographed from behind. On closer analysis, however, it turns out that the surface of photo printing contains more secrets. It’s crossed, in fact, by small hand written notations and well-aligned additions, all traces coming from letters, diaries, notebooks that Guadagnoli collected, extrapolated and made them dialogue with the images in a suspended atmosphere. Tiny leakages of color mention the relationship never forgotten that in the landscape binds photography and painting while in the background the urban profiles more than describing evoke distant cities together with the history that generated them. A boy observes the landscape that spreads before his eyes and on which appears, incongruously, his own shadow: that’s how Guadagnoli reminds us of the subtle charm of what a photograph is capable of when more than to history it refers to the human interiority.
Roberto Mutti
Comments 5
Veramente bella.
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