Portale della cultura italiana

Twenty-nine artists, ninety works, a through-line represented by observing at a distance: the collective “The Glancing Room – Italian photographers” is running in Palermo at the Palazzo Sant'Elia from December 19, 2009 to March 21, 2010. Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, the exhibit is a journey through images from the 1950's to today.

Underwritten by the Province and organized at Civita Sicilia, the exhibit (entrance is free) presents photographs by the following artists in the exhibit space in Via Maqueda: Claudio Abate, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Antonio Biasucci, Lisetta Carmi, Elisabetta Catalano, Mario Cresci, Luciano D’Alessandro, Franco Fontana, Francesco Jodice, Mimmo Jodice, Raffaella Mariniello, Paolo Mussat Sartor, Ferdinando Scianna, Paul Thorel, Aniello Barone, Luca Campigotto, Federico Garolla, Mario Giacomelli, Luigi Ghirri, Ugo Mulas, Lia Pasqualino, Beatrice Pediconi, Dino Pedriali, Paolo Pellegrin, Marialba Russo, Paola Salerno, Oliviero Toscani (including two Sicilians, Scianna and Pasqualino). 

There are a number of themes, subjects and stories in these shots, with one common denominator: the “pathos of distance,” as the curator himself defines it. “Italian photography,” writes Bonito Oliva in the critical note of the catalogue published by Peliti Associati, “ introduces the torque typical of anamorphosis within the field of imagery, which belongs to the history of painting, making a disciplined use of the tools of photographic language. It places itself within the duel: the photographer, in front of the data, does not allow his finger to hasten the shot, but rather promotes a series of relationships and reflections […] The photography is not random and instantaneous, it is not the result of an elementary doubling, but rather a posing that complicates and renders ambigious the reality from which it takes off.”  From the “awareness of a presence, of a diaphragm made up of a figurative language which allows them to name things but not to own them” from the willfully “alien” position of the photographer, takes its name from the exhibit, the reference to that blind and ascetic space that is the photographer's eye, the “ glancing room” as it were.

The exhibit itinerary presents images from yesterday and today, of places near and far, with familiar and unknown faces. A number of different worlds are told, from the formidable Muscovite palaces of Gabriele Basilico to Aniello Barone's urban landscapes marred by trash, to the boundless countryside outside Lucca by Franco Fontana, to the arid Afghan mountains by Paolo Pellegrin. Film, art and literature are present in the artists' portraits: an elderly Ezra Pound by Lisetta Carmi, a young Maurizio Mochetti by Elisabetta Catalano – and in the shots by Lia Pasqualino on the set of Roberto Andò's film The Prince's Manuscript; while Dino Pedriali captures Federico Fellini and Andy Warhol. Mario Giacomelli, the “magical realist” photographer who was also a poet, cites verses by Mario Luzi in the series “Night Washes the Brain.” Celebrities and common people alternate, from Pier Paolo Pasolini playing soccer, as immortalized by Federico Garolla, to the little old man at the Naples pawn shop, photographed by Luciano D’Alessandro to the elegant New York couple by Gianni Berengo Gardin. The enigmatic Nativity Scene by Antonio Biasiucci is juxtaposed with photos by Ferdinando Scianna of the religious festivities of Tre Castagni and Racalmuto in the 1960's, focusing on both populist devotion and secular rapture. Oliviero Toscani takes part with his controversial image Anorexia, shot for an ad campaign on the issue of eating disorders.