Shifts
Although the work of these four artists is very personal, it overlaps with certain aspects of the theme of the 2017 edition of the European Month of Photography “Looking for the Clouds”. Being artists of the intimate and the everyday, they look at modes of existence where the familiar is defined in a larger frame that is that of an aspiration to a transcendental existence, where the virtues of humanity and in hope and desire take their true place.
In his work Duccio Doretti develops a meditation on humanity that is capable of inventing the atomic bomb and at the same time exploring space and pushing beyond the boundaries of existence. If the former reveals the formidable capacity of destruction which is inherent in the history of man, the latter reflects the dream, the aspiration to transcend. Doretti associates two dates, the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945 and the first steps on the moon of Buzz Aldrin in 1969 which is also his birthday. His work highlights the fragility of the human species, even the futility of existence. Seen from the the moon, the earth appears as a tiny planet lost in space. Its delicate nature threatened with destruction.
In its project “Trans Europe Migration – on the track of refugees between Greece and Germany”,
Rocco Rorandelli covers mankind in the form of fragments, of details which can be observed as one moves closer to the object. By zooming in on these images, one discovers a complete repertoire of humanity. The baggage of these refugees brings witness of the unhappy part of their journey, and what it means to be uprooted leaving everything behind. The plastic bottles that litter the ground along the transit roads capture the magnitude of this tragedy. The smile on the faces of the children, hope in the eyes of their parents, offer a glimpse of the endurance of those who made this difficult journey. The man who helps a woman through a muddy stream and volunteers handing out provisions speak of a trait inherent in humanity – compassion. The couple holding hands reveals a discrete moment of intimacy otherwise difficult to find in a crowded shelter. And finally, the cameras pointing to those who are resting show that many questions remain unanswered, notably concerning the fate of Europe and how these immigrants will shape its future in the coming decades.
Rocco Rorandelli is very interested in issues related to migration. Coming from an intercultural family – an Italian father and an American mother – and his wife coming from India, he witnesses a world that he discovers to more close and charitable when we ignore physical barriers.
“As above so below” by Bärbel Reinhard is a sort of newspaper evoking a strange familiarity with objects, opening up to the hermetic idea of correspondences not always obvious. She establishes a sort of map based on a spontaneous and instinctive connection of objects and experiences in a constellation that aims to create a personal archive.
In principle society relies on a set of fundamental codes that define the a priori of all culture and impose an order on our experience. These categories may seem vague and fragmentary.
Rather than creating a definitive inventory – providing the illusion of possession or control – Bärbel Reinhard proposes a “combinatorics” which reveals at the same time the dissociative character as well as the link that is established between signifier and signified.
“Home” by Stefano Parrini is a project consisting of a series of images emerging from the depths of space, functioning like the portholes of a ship or the objective of a telescope shedding light on another universe – in His case his personal and domestic universe. They are planets, nebulae, meticulously chosen constellations of everyday life.
Parrini uses old rolls of film, taking fragments of images selected accordingly, for example the end of the rolls or the first segments of the film. It may also be the image of a home LED lamp. These images then are listed and coded according to their location that will be marked on a map, each image with an initial.
He so gives birth to a mini cosmos reflecting the macrocosm who is home to us all. (Pierre Stiwer)