New York, 2011, No Title
Los Angeles, 2010,
Los Angeles, 2010, Gallery
New York, 2015, Pressa meccanica
New York, 2012, Subway
New York, 2011, Subway
New York, Subway, 2011
New York, Public Phone, 2011
Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2011
New York Vs Atget
New York vs Atget
“Remarkably, almost all these pictures are empty” W.Benjamin
Doing away with ornaments and sanding surfaces smooth to convey reality as objectively as possible, this has been the thrust of the work of French photographer Eugene Atget- a work by subtraction which has allowed this artist to amass around 10.000 shots of a silvery Paris immersed in a highly surreal atmosphere. Streets, squares, doors, stairs, facades. A silent architecture, in which man leaves no trace and has no place. Armed with his heavy, awkward-to-use folding camera, Atget ventured into early-20th century Paris, employing long exposure times which populatedhis shots with ghostly processions.
His fondness for this technique distanced him from Pictorialism, transforming his photography into an independent tool. Beloved by Surrealists, Atget’s work foreshadows the chance alienation of man from his surroundings that would later derive from Surrealist photography. Why Atget? Why right now? Passing through architectural and social delusions of modern megalopoli, tens of millions people bump into one another as though on a postmodern fairground ride; a mass of faces, smells, aberrations, flavours, sorrows. While early-20th century Paris may have become a contemporary ghost, Atget’s work survives the test of time, proving that the absence of other people is directly proportional to the multitude of strangers tirelessly finding one another by random chance.
The past ten years, spent between New York, Shanghai, Paris, have forced me to focus my camera lens on the human abyss around me, ultimately leaving me free to choose those shots in which a deafening “absence” turned into presence, showing us in deserted landscapes the image of someone who just moved out of sight, leaving behind only an aura. Forgotten dimensions contain traces of all the people who were once part of them. Our “seeing” preserves what we already know, rendering us witnesses of the emptiness dazzling us in every picture.
Matteo Spinola
“Remarkably, almost all these pictures are empty” W.Benjamin
Doing away with ornaments and sanding surfaces smooth to convey reality as objectively as possible, this has been the thrust of the work of French photographer Eugene Atget- a work by subtraction which has allowed this artist to amass around 10.000 shots of a silvery Paris immersed in a highly surreal atmosphere. Streets, squares, doors, stairs, facades. A silent architecture, in which man leaves no trace and has no place. Armed with his heavy, awkward-to-use folding camera, Atget ventured into early-20th century Paris, employing long exposure times which populatedhis shots with ghostly processions.
His fondness for this technique distanced him from Pictorialism, transforming his photography into an independent tool. Beloved by Surrealists, Atget’s work foreshadows the chance alienation of man from his surroundings that would later derive from Surrealist photography. Why Atget? Why right now? Passing through architectural and social delusions of modern megalopoli, tens of millions people bump into one another as though on a postmodern fairground ride; a mass of faces, smells, aberrations, flavours, sorrows. While early-20th century Paris may have become a contemporary ghost, Atget’s work survives the test of time, proving that the absence of other people is directly proportional to the multitude of strangers tirelessly finding one another by random chance.
The past ten years, spent between New York, Shanghai, Paris, have forced me to focus my camera lens on the human abyss around me, ultimately leaving me free to choose those shots in which a deafening “absence” turned into presence, showing us in deserted landscapes the image of someone who just moved out of sight, leaving behind only an aura. Forgotten dimensions contain traces of all the people who were once part of them. Our “seeing” preserves what we already know, rendering us witnesses of the emptiness dazzling us in every picture.
Matteo Spinola
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