December 2012
Every photograph is a trace. Momentary and seemingly insignificant. This minimal and humble fragment of reality must be charged with timeless and immense dimensions and refer to the unreal world of a personal photographic language. This contradiction between the medium's simplicity and the complexity of its transformation is largely responsible for the strength and uniqueness of photography. However, if one tries to negate this contradiction instead of highlighting and exploiting it, one can easily end up with artificial solutions imposed from outside, such as the excessive enlargement of prints, prolonged contemplative observation of the photographic copy, or even recourse to theoretical acrobatics. But this achieves nothing more than a mockery of photography's charming humility.
The photographer, in his attempt to communicate with the viewer (usually through an exhibition or publication), must respect and highlight the above contradiction. This will help the recipient of his photographs perceive both the new reality born through these photographs and the photographer's personal photographic language. This process is extremely important because the participation (and possibly complicity) of the viewer is an essential element for the completion of the photographic process, as without recipients the new reality and new language remain perpetually orphaned and suspended.
To achieve this communication, the photographer must remember that each of his photographs may exist independently as a value and quality, but acquires the stature of a personal language through its affinity with other similar or opposite works of the same photographer. He must also have realized that the fragments that are the photographs must remain fragments. Thus, both the long time spent observing a photograph and the huge prints dissolve the robustness of the frame and the mystery of the moment. Photography has the ability to condense space and time, allowing - contrary to the known saying - a return to the same river and the moment that has passed. And the more it prompts and allows us to return, the more successful it is.
Perhaps it would be appropriate for the photographs in an exhibition to be of such size and arrangement that they allow the gaze to move from one to another neighboring image, returning just as easily and quickly to the previous one. Likewise, the photograph on one page should be able to converse with that on the adjacent page. Thus, the viewer will be able to grasp the quality of the photographer's language and the nature of his obsessions, while simultaneously through the similarities or contrasts of the photographs, reconstructing the photographed world.
It is quite possible that Eugène Atget (1857-1927) had not realized that the dark world of Parisian gardens he photographed always needed a hopeful clearing to which the viewer's gaze is led through the personal language formed by the photographs of this great photographer. However, emphasizing this element, without detracting from the uniqueness of each photograph, enriches the communication, stimulates thought, and deepens the enjoyment.
Plato Rivellis