Sono lieto di annunciare la mia nuova collaborazione con ars-imago per il progetto instant collection, una serie di mostre che si terranno nella neonata ars-imago gallery all'interno della loro sede di Roma. Abbiamo chiesto a un gruppo di fotografi di realizzare dei lavori ex-novo utilizzando le pellicole The Impossible Project, sfidandoli a scoprire che cosa succede alla loro fotografia quando abbandonano i loro strumenti abituali per la bellezza imprevedibile della pellicola istantanea.
Il primo della lista sarà Alessandro Imbriaco con valitutti, un diario intimo nel quale veniamo guidati attraverso un paesaggio in continuo movimento fatto di vita quotidiana e memorie, tracce del passato e frammenti di presente.
La mostra sarà inaugurata il 2 dicembre alle ore 19.00.
I prossimi appuntamenti saranno con Marco Zanta a febbraio e Massimo Siragusa a aprile.
Alessandro Imbriaco, valitutti - 2 dicembre 2011 - 20 gennaio 2012.
ars-imago gallery, Via degli Scipioni 24-26 - Roma.
I am glad to announce my new collaboration with my friends and analog paladins from ars-imago on the instant collection project, a series of exhibitions which will be hosted in the newborn ars-imago gallery at their headquarter in Rome. We have invited a group of photographers to produce a brand new work expressly for the ars-imago gallery using The Impossible Project films, challenging them to find out what happens to their photography when they drop their familiar tools and embrace the unpredictable beauty of the instant film.
The first artist in line is Alessandro Imbriaco with the work valitutti, an intense private diary where we are guided through the shifting landscape of daily life and personal memories, traces from the past and fragments of today.
The show will open on December 2 at 7pm local time.
The following exhibitions will be Marco Zanta in February and Massimo Siragusa in April.
Stay tuned!
All images © Alessandro Imbriaco
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
instant collection
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Waste Land
Pieter Hugo will be in Rome on November 30 (6pm local time) to hold a lecture at MAXXI - National Museum of the 21st Century Art ahead of the opening of an exhibition of his latest work, Permanent Error, a series of portraits and landscapes taken in a dump site of e-waste near the slum of Agbogbloshie, in Ghana.
Like a dark mirror of our daily life and all our beloved technological extensions, this work shows us a ground zero of dry land and clouds of smoke, filled by creatures that could come from Hugo's previous work about Nigeria's fim industry, Nollywood - except they're not. This time they are real people, and what is unreal is the fact that they are in that place, covered with all those rusted and alien objects, while toxic smoke rises up the sky, and some cows inexplicably manage to stroll around peacefully or lie on the ground asleep, maybe dreaming of a different world.
Permanent Error will be at MAXXI from December 1st, 2011, to April 29, 2012.
All images taken from Permanent Error © Pieter Hugo
Friday, November 18, 2011
The bubble chamber
The caption next to the wall shown above, from the exhibition Of Large and Small at the Royal Library in Copenhagen, says:
"The pictures were taken in a 2 metre long bubble chamber in CERN in Switzerland in 1967. They were used for studying so-called strong interactions at proton clashes with the - at that time - very highest energy level. At this time one began to understand that protons themselves were built from smaller parts, and on pictures it is possible to see a number of particles created by the clashes."
I think it is safe to say that these are among the most interesting traces ever left on film since the birth of photography (btw, today is Daguerre's birthday).
See for yourself:
And if you want some more, you only have to ask.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Written in sand
Dornith Doherty, Seed Head 2, 2010
Dornith Doherty's photography is devoted to the investigations of the variety, the resourcefulness and the fragility of the plant kingdom, and of the natural environment extensively. She especially focuses on the struggle to preserve nature's diversity, shown through a beautiful combination of microphotographs of plant seeds and a images showing the interiors of seed banks around the world.
Dornith Doherty, Drying Seeds and Pliers, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 2009
Before that, she made several photographic series, like Altered Terrain and Constructed Landscapes, where for example she combines still lives made of natural specimens with projections of photographs of the places where these were collected.
Dornith Doherty, After the Rain, 2005
Her mini dioramas bear a striking resemblance with Abelardo Morell's latest update of his Camera Obscura work, called Tent Camera, in which he photographs the projection coming through the pinhole and falling on the ground.
Abelardo Morell, Tent-Camera Image On Ground: View of Cerro Castellan and Tuff Canyon. Big Bend National Park, Texas, 2010
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Contingency plans
Fresh from a G20 summit which failed to agree on a plan to arrest the ongoing global recession, and in the middle of the various "Occupy" protests happening in different cities, I ran into Immo Klink and his project Security, which shows the deployment of police forces during international meetings of heads of state and summits alike. I especially like the night photographs, where policemen become like menacing fireflies scattered all over, thanks to the clever use of a flashlight, while the Gleneagles series shows them in the middle of the green of the countryside, looking a bit lost, as if somebody threw them in the middle of it, while they are still trying to figure out where they are.
Klink has another project called European Communities, a hommage to those communities living in nature in makeshift houses (or not, some are quite remarkable and solid), divided in three chapters: Shelter, Life, Dwellers. This adds another series to the survey of photographic works about shelters I have ben doing recently - see previous chapters here, here and here.
People living in shelters among the woods on one side, police everywhere on the other: is this man trying to predict Europe's near future?
All images © Immo Klink
