Gente di Fotografia n°61

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For what has been done and undone along Italy’s coasts there is no remedy, apart from the one, that our small economic resources cannot afford: demolition. The beauty of the Marches hills can still be saved, instead. But it is linked to a new and different Italian policy. Nobody can deny that most of the Italian touristic resources find their beauty in the sceneries. Even those who are not interested in cultivating beauty, should at least, for money's sake, pay attention to the safeguard of the variety of Italian territory, that requires continuous efforts. Specialized photographers should also work for the safeguard of territory, as they could document every local peculiarity. […]The conservation of the landscape’s qualities goes hand in hand with the conservation of historical memory, that, as far as it concerns the last century, has found in photography a great strength, but now needs a big work of re-evaluation. That means that – as it is done by the beautiful research presented by Vincenzo Marzocchini – the photographic material, that is bulky saved in the archives, needs to be transformed into cultural legacy. Local governments should encourage this commitment to research, and do everything in their power to avoid that pictures, that are today dispersed in many public and private drawers, get lost. The creation of a national “visual bank” would be a good idea to store our documental legacy. I do hope that, by seeing this research carried out by Vincenzo Marzocchini, many people will understand the need to make this dream come true. mostre page 108 Wim Wenders 4 Real & True 2 Angela Maria Piga - Vastness is Wim Wenders’s genius loci, large painted backgrounds are his goal. Three decades of photographs, more than 60 large-size pictures shot all over the world by the great German filmmaker. Düsseldorf, where Wenders was born in 1945, pays tribute to him with an exhibition at the Museum Kunstpalast, curated by the director of the Museum, Beat Wismer and by Wenders himself. Light is the protagonist of these photographs, and the horizon is the vanishing point. The horizon has no limits imposed by the camera or by the photograph. Through the movement, Wenders can capture the space to come in all its width, always at human reach. Wenders’s horizon recalls the painting on canvas, which he approached as a young man, by attending the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf. He then left for the University of Television and Film Munich in 1967. Painting is there, over these vast expanses of light and colour. The light is stark and arid, bright and lively, pure and distilled, evoking the Dutch painters, from Vermeer to Rembrandt, who heavily influenced Wenders’s creativity. As he stated in 2005 in an interview with Daniel Bickermann: “As the filmmaker, which is what I became after some detours, and also as photographer, I owe infinitely more to the history of painting than to the history of film or photography.” Yet, differently from the number of deserts, urban archaeology sites and horizons, which are often the subjects of contemporary photography, Wenders’s eyes are never captured by the absence of people, or by ruins, but by the power of the colours to bring things to life. The snapshot does not freeze reality, but it pushes it even forward: every snapshot is a magnificat, an epiphany heading towards a tangible horizon. In this context, the abandoned urban landscape is just a point, indeed, a vanishing point. As Wenders told the curator and director of the Museum, Beat Wismer: “Look at this, this exists, I have seen it, I want to show it to you”. This reality, which doesn’t claim to be realistic, is expressed by the movement of the eyes and by the light: the aerial perspective of Wenders’s analogue snapshots gives back to the light (which is never artificial) its speed and its dynamic nature, nothing is static, the snapshot moves forward along with the eyes. The lack of tripod gives the artist the opportunity to shot at human height: Wenders’s horizon is not ideal, or psychic, or the result of utopia. It is real. From the initial snapshots in b/n, to the panoramic photography of monumental landscapes – recalling Veronese’s Italian painting, besides the Dutch one – to the Ground Zero images, rarely exhibited before, up to the photographs taken just one year ago, Wenders’s eyes remain basically narrative, never nostalgic. Because the colour does not stand for the lack of human subjects, but for their testimony. Wenders’s narrative is in contrast with the one mainly melancholic of his movies, as stated by Beat Wismer: “In his pictures he refrains from telling any stories whatsoever. Wenders’ photographs are distinctly different from the stills taken from his films: The mostly quiet shots usually devoid of people offer a potential, seducing us to conjure up our own stories.” Rassegne page 110 Düsseldorf Photo Week-End 2015 Angela Maria Piga - This year, the Düsseldorf Photo Week-End 2015 (at its fourth edition) opens the city’s doors to photography during the first three opening days – from 30 th January to 1 st February (but it will last until March and April for most of the participants): 13 public and private institutions and more than 20 art galleries have organised both contemporary and historical photographic exhibitions. This event aims at giving a new image of the relation between the capital of North Westphalia and photography. The relation is still influenced by the School of Photography founded by Bernd and Hilla Becher, which acquired international recognition thanks to Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Thomas Ruff, and to which the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf dedicated an important exhibition (open until 11 th January 2015). The exhibitions are basically composed of parts of institutional collections. Among the most important exhibitions, the NRW Forum hosts a selection from the collection of the Deutsche Boerse, “Human nature”, curated by Anne-Marie Beckmann. It focuses on the human impact on nature and it includes photographs by Paul Almasy, Mike Brodie, John Davies, Axel Hütte, Vivian Maier, Simon Norfolk, Sebastião Salgado and Gunnar Smoliansky. The NRW Forum also hosts the exhibition presented and curated by Enrica Viganò, probably the most important one of the entire event: “Neorealism: The new image in Italy 1932-1960”. The exhibition deals with the cultural origin of the neorealist photography, that is how it was an integral part, along with cinema and literature, of the entire neorealist experience – more a different perspective on art, than an art movement itself - which freed photographers from the myth of the “beautiful Italy”. The exhibition bursts into the photographic context of the city, both from the cultural and visual points of view, with the stark and rarely lyrical photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin, Mario Cattaneo, Nino Migliori, Mario De Biasi, Giancolombo, Pablo Volta or Piergiorgio Branzi, to name a few. Part of the works of AFORK (Archiv künstlerischer Fotografie der rheinischen Kunstszene) is exhibited at the Museum Kunstpalast, along with Maren Heyne’s portraits (1941, Munich) and Vera Lutter’s photographs, made with the Camera Obscura especially for the Museum. Videos and photographs (taken from her own videos) by Elizabeth Price -the British artist who was awarded the Turner Prize in 2012 – are part of the exhibition “Number Nine” at the Julia Stoschek Collection. The Polish Institute hosts the “Radiation” collection, which gathers photographs from different periods (such as those of the botanist Wilhelm Beermann, who lived in the 19 th century), taken with different methods. Among the private galleries, special mention goes to the Clara Sels Gallery, with Gabriele Croppi’s (1974) and Peter Marifoglou’s (Thessaloniki, 1954) photographs, and to the Voss Gallery. The latter has presented the exhibition “Lost Scapes”, which includes photographs of the Israeli photographer Uri Gershuni and Giacomo Costa (Florence, 1970). Costa’s artificial landscapes are indirectly linked with the aesthetic phenomenon, which took place during the past decades, when art absorbed photography, introducing it among the leading disciplines of the contemporary world. Costa, on the contrary, remains a photographer, even when he uses techniques for the processing of photographs. In this way, photography absorbs art, not vice versa. Without any pictorial signs, Costa shows the very nature of photography, that is, the ability to obtain artificial results through technique, today replaced by technology. 140
incontri page 112 Claudio Composti Direttore artistico mc2gallery Giusy Randazzo. First of all, tell us about yourself. Why did you decide to open a photographic gallery? Claudio Composti. Well, photography has always been my passion, I really wanted to be a photographer. But then I started working with photographers and gave my desire a practical application. mc2gallery was born in 2009, I set it up with my friend and associate Vincenzo Maccarone, a young collector that I met in Berlin a couple of years before opening the gallery. We have a common passion for Art, which kept increasing in Vincenzo, so, after a few years spent going around fairs and exhibitions, we decided to start this adventure. Before that, I have had a 13 years long experience at the Ca’ di Fra’ gallery, that I had opened with my father Gianfranco Composti, my two sisters Manuela and Maxela, and Franco Toselli. In that gallery, in 1997, I started working my way up with two “old school” (which I believe it is the best one) teachers, who taught me how to do this job. Thanks to my father, I have been breathing Art since I was a child. At first, it was just my most favourite hobby, then, it became the job of my life. Indeed, at a certain moment, I felt the need to live my time and to start taking my own path and my decisions, following my love for photography. There we are now. What kind of photography is there in your gallery? It is a research gallery. Since the very beginning, we decided to support and promote the work of young artists, sometimes funding their first exhibition, or presenting them on their first Italian exhibitions, like Nicolas Feldmeyer. We have always supported mid-career artists as well, especially foreigners, like Julia Fullerton-Batten, Simon Roberts or the Chinese Yang Yongliang, but also foreign established and well-known photographers like Michael Ackerman, Jacob Aue Sobol, Vanessa Winship. Sometimes directly with them or with their galleries. In any case, our choices have been determined by the research of artists that put together the subjectivity of aesthetic and narrative content or careful research, that, in our opinion, should always coincide, as in Renato D’Agostin, Lamberto Teotino or Roberto Kusterle’s works. What do you think about documentary photography and reportages? Do you think they have a market? Reportage is very difficult to be sold. As selling is not its “natural” consequence. Those pictures are more suitable for public exhibitions and for social purposes. Instead, if we refer to intimate photography, comparable to a personal “diary”, in which the author portrays experiences and situations that become the narrative subject, as in Michael Ackerman, Jacob Aue Sobol, Pierre Gonnord and Antoine D’Agata, then there absolutely is a market, even if it is not easy. There is a poetry that takes part into it, over the aesthetic aspect that is usually of secondary importance in reportages, as they are made of the narration of raw events and they are far from the realistic and personal interpretations of events. In your opinion, what are the qualities of a good photography? Vision and determination. When I talk about ‘vision’, I mean the capacity (of artists in general) to see the invisible and to be able to describe it, anticipating a “feeling” that goes from the personal vision to universality, that belongs to everyone. In this particular case through a snapshot. With ‘determination’, I mean the courage to describe without “shame” what the author has and is inside. A snapshot hits the observer when it is not the result of compromises, and when it is made with determination. It can be aesthetic or not. It can be a beautiful picture or a “tough” picture, this is clear. To cite Barthes, the punctum, hits your heart. “A nice picture or a tough picture”. An alternative that urges me to ask if you meant that good photography does not have to stay in the category of beauty. As I said, beauty is subjective, without any technical and objective reference. The basis for the discrimination comes from the correspondence between form and content, beauty and meaning: sometimes a picture is more addressed towards aesthetics, as it happens in Julia Fullerton-Batten or Yang Yongliang; in other cases, it can be more “tough”, as in Araki, Joel Peter Witkin, Michael Ackerman and Gonnord. The chosen guidelines are always heart and instinct though, they have the last word. If you were to describe the work done by a gallery owner, what would you underline? The intellectual approach and the istinctive feelings when evaluating a work or an artist, even before the economic aspect (that is still a fundamental factor in the decision making process). Allow me a provocative question. Many photographers think that most gallery owners do not understand anything about photography and that they expose the works of authors that, for obscure reasons, have nothing to do with photography in itself, but have more success with collectors. Others believe that the choices of gallery owners can influence collectors. What is the truth? How does a gallery owner take decisions? And, anyway, does a gallery owner have the “power” to influence the market? He does, partially. The market is now so wide and fractioned that it leaves a lot of space to improvisation. So, it is true that many would-be gallery owners, critics and photographers do not know anything about photography. It is also true – obviously - that if an important gallery promotes the exhibition of a young artist, this will have a much stronger influence on the market than if the artist was presented by a less known gallery. In this case (important), galleries can influence collectors. At that point, buying a certain artist’s work becomes an investment in itself. But in Italy and abroad, only historical galleries have this power. Also, we have to say that this happens because they have acquired quite a credibility in the field, after years of investments, experience and quality of their exhibitions. When it comes to money, I think that denying that there are some expositive and selling strategies, is a bit naive, and I believe that applying strategies is correct, as gallery owners investment time and money to organize the artists’ exhibitions. Strategies are part of the game and they take place any time there is supply and demand, i.e. a market. On the other hand, I believe that neither collectors nor critics have the same kind of influent power. Not today, at least. Yet, most of the “allegations” are often the mirror of the frustrations of those that live outside this “world of Art” and out of the “system” (if there still was one). It sounds more like the fable of the fox and the grapes to me… A well-known photographer comes to my mind. Last year, during an interview, I asked Gianni Berengo Gardin if photographers study their colleagues’ photography, and so he answered: «Unfortunately, most of the photographers – especially professionals – look a lot at themselves and do not care about the others. They actually do not love photography, they love “their” photographs. Whereas it is very important to love the others’ photographs as well». I absolutely agree. If you replace the word photographers with gallery owners, the concept will be exactly the same. Only a few gallery owners go and see their colleagues’ exhibitions. What does it mean to be an “expert in photography”? What kind of sensibility do you need to recognize a “good and beautiful” photograph? You need to study, read and look around yourself. You have to be curious. This is the starting point for everything. Instinct is fundamental, but not everyone has it. Why have you decided to participate in MIA? How did it go in Singapore? MIA (Milan Image Art) is a fair that we have been doing for some years. Importantly, Fabio Castelli is the first – and only one, up to now – that has created an Italian fair dedicated to Authorial Photography, finally pushing the value of Photography as an art masterpiece, going beyond a technique and amateur approach that characterises Photo shows. Last year, for the first time, he tried to propose an edition of MIA in Singapore. For us, this choice was linked to our will to develop our relation with Asia, by working with artists that work around that geographic area: from China (Yang Yongliang and Liu Xiaofang), Korea (Chan Hyo Bae) and Vietnam (Tiffany Chung). It was a good opportunity to develop new contacts with local galleries and with potential international collectors. Unfortunately, the response was not as good as we expected. Why? What happened in Singapore? The venue was excellent (Marina Bay Sands) and even the – hypothetical – target of collectors was very good. Taking into account that every first edition of a fair, especially abroad, is uncertain – especially in such a distant country, both geographically and culturally – and taking into account that determining the success of a fair requires the analysis of a number of aspects, which go beyond the selling activity, it has to be acknowledged that, unfortunately, collectors did not attend the fair in Singapore, so I have to suspend my judgment as we did not have any kind of feedback about the public’s tastes. Every one of us had believed in this attempt, Castelli too. He is the one that can better answer your question and tell you what has not worked and why. 141
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