RETURN TO PHOTOGRAPHY
Recalling the first photo of Earth taken from the Moon, published in 1969, photographer Luigi Ghiri wrote that it was not “just an image of the world but an image which contained all the images of the world: graffiti, frescoes, paintings, writings, photographs, books, films.” It was an event which left a profound mark on society and art in those years. In July 2010 the European Space Agency circulated the first photograph of the whole of the universe, which contained the whole of its past, including its moment of creation, the so-called Big Bang. Scientists may therefore journey back in time, removing layer after layer, as one does when restoring a painting, until they reach that weak microwave radiation produced by the enormous explosion which generated space, time and matter 13.7 billion years ago. This was an epoch-making event, published in the media without any song and dance, as though it were quite normal. The French curator and new media expert Richard Castelli recently said: “The problem with our present is that it is so present that it is killing the future and has almost completely killed history”. In this context the eternal present of photography should find its maximum expression and yet, paradoxically, it seems that the image is no longer adequate to represent reality and must necessarily form a hybrid with other practices. Recently there has been a great deal of discussion between people questioning the future of photography. These are divided equally between the new doomsayers who prematurely decree its definitive demise, the fundamentalists of analogical and documentary dogma, and the new-radicals who advocate postproduction at any cost. British photographer Paul Graham said, in the speech he delivered at the MoMA Photography Forum, that we are in a post-documentary age in which the position of so-called “ ‘straight’ photography in the art world reminds me of the parable of an isolated community who grew up eating potatoes all their life, and when presented with an apple, thought it unreasonable and useless, because it didn’t taste like a potato..”
Rather than coming up with solutions the fifth edition of Rapallo Fotografia Contemporanea, attempts to raise some doubts by proposing a reflection on the essentiality of photography. The new series of portraits by Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas, dedicated to working dogs , leads us back to a basic, lean and stripped down form of the image that is only apparently more simple as it is rich in social references and implications, just like human dynamics. Similarly the six artists in the Open Space section Bergantini, Crovetto, Garibotti, Leotta, Ligato and Positano, are extremely conscious of the way that they deal with the theme of the return to the image as image. Seeking essentiality does not in this case mean regressing to a primordial state or returning to a hypothetical garden of Eden. Rather it means concentrating on the image itself, without adding anything else.
Andrea Botto
RFC Artistic Director
Rather than coming up with solutions the fifth edition of Rapallo Fotografia Contemporanea, attempts to raise some doubts by proposing a reflection on the essentiality of photography. The new series of portraits by Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas, dedicated to working dogs , leads us back to a basic, lean and stripped down form of the image that is only apparently more simple as it is rich in social references and implications, just like human dynamics. Similarly the six artists in the Open Space section Bergantini, Crovetto, Garibotti, Leotta, Ligato and Positano, are extremely conscious of the way that they deal with the theme of the return to the image as image. Seeking essentiality does not in this case mean regressing to a primordial state or returning to a hypothetical garden of Eden. Rather it means concentrating on the image itself, without adding anything else.
Andrea Botto
RFC Artistic Director