a journey around
80images
BEAUTY IS VARIETY
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GUATEMALA - Chichicastenango market, 2000
INTRODUCTION
"People are the best show in the world. And you don't even pay for the ticket" Charles Bukovski, General Tales of Ordinary Madness, 1972
PREFACE
What is the main thing to carry if you start a journey? Latins used the term "viaticum" which meant the basic survival food needed to start your journey. For a modern tourist it is certainly his camera, or rather any technological means that
A book therefore, poses an invitation to know each other as a bearer of such variety which is an essential element of beauty that is both a surprise and a wonder, or in one word: knowledge, that allows us to enrich and improve ourselves.
nowadays allows you to take a snapshot of your own life. Thanks to a good number of photographs, this book will lead you through a real voyage of discovery, which can become a representation of the amazing variety of human emotions and their incredible potential of beauty.
In order to allow any reader to better understand and analyze the beauty of infinite human variety, this book is structured as a journey with three parts: first a general analysis, second a horizontal-geographic travel, and finally vertical travel through the ages of human evolution.
Yes, because, the “wonder of the world is yourself”, or the
Enjoy the journey.
human being or, as Desmond Morris said, “the Naked Ape”, with all the infinite social, cultural and physical variety. A race that became ruler of the world because of his intelligence and, of which, we often forget. 2
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MESSICO - 2000
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” Marcel Proust
TRAVELLING Think of a place that you are trying to reach at any cost because you
Book hotels and finally start thinking if you can see everything but,
have heard its natural and artistic magnificence or have seen a
above all, take pictures of everything.
p h o t o g r a p h .
Yes, tourist photography is a constant search for an extension of our
Prepare your luggage, with your unforgettable bags for camera and
memory that helps us not to forget all the places that we have so
c a m c o r d e r .
laboriously visited. Over the years, however, it becomes like a huge
Organize your travel itinerary, with all steps remarked in your
collection of stickers that a passionate collector takes care of with
guidebooks, bought in large quantity because just one is never
extreme meticulousness, being always ready to extend their album
c o m p l e t e .
with new images. 3
What is leading him to travel is a strong desire to keep everything in
was the beginning of a love which continues today even if with less
his mind; we could almost call it “instinct for survival�: I was here so I
maniacal passion.
am. Adding the anxiety to reach and see, the search for the
After the madness of a typical departure day when alarm clock
unknown, which is typical of adventurers, we understand how a
anxiety causes uncontrolled outbursts, we finally leave.
journey, even if well organized, can easily trigger the release of
Keep calm, your journey starts in your room or wherever you are,
adrenaline.
you simply turn the page. Giorgio Savio’s pictures will take you
However, it is possible to make a distinction between the tourist
around the world in 80 images.
photographer and the photo tourist: the former carries with him a
If you want to continue your journey, visit our website:
small, tiny camera but so automatic that it seems to take a picture by
www.saviobooks.com
itself when he shouts "woww!" (or, if younger, "coool"); the latter, instead, meticulously puts all his equipment inside bags that precisely take all the weight and space of the luggage for the whole family prepared, in the meantime, by the spouse. Here, Giorgio Savio, my father, actually belongs to the second category. His method of organization does not allow changes much less intrusion. His two cameras have to be easily accessible in the bag, and ready to use. The lenses: a zoom and an ultra-wide-angle; should be interchangeable with both cameras. Analog films, in terms of containers, must be of various types and strictly split by black / white, color and ASA (or light sensitivity of film also called ISO in modern digital cameras). I remember that, rather than making me use his photo handbag and cameras, he gave me a camera as a present, only for me! Well, it
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BALI - rice terraces
ANTHROPOS
"Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity, more humble & I believe true to consider him created from animals ‌� Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
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ITALY - Piedmont
“From an anthropological point of view, we are certainly disabled people to live in this world and society because as confirmed by doctors and psychologists, our body, our psyche was shaped in an environment radically different from the one in which we live and the evolution of society proceeded much faster than the evolution of species.” Giuseppe Pontiggia, Disabled from an anthropological perspective (interview in italialibri.net)
MAN CONQUERS THE WORLD Anthropos, traditionally interpreted as a suffix of many words
both sides of their heads). - Rosario Vieni (philologist), "The
such as anthropology, anthropomorphic... needs to be brought
language of the Mycenaean."
back to its true roots. "The term has undergone a substantial phonetic change during its long history for which we can say that this word simply indicates an animal (man) who "walks
Maybe Darwin’s concept of evolution was within the thoughts
looking forward/ straight ahead "(obviously in relation to some
of ancient Greeks, who, conscious of the divine origin of man,
other animals which do not look forward, as they have eyes on
used to link the earthly and divine world. Man was already seen as a particular form of animal, different from others 6
Interactive World Map – conquest of the world, 160,000 YEARS OF HISTORY 160.000 years ago
Bering Strait
160,000 years ago
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because of its cranial shape which puts eyes straight ahead
an exponential increase of borders designed to keep out
and allows to look always forward and in particular to the
foreigners.
future.
The term “stranger” comes from the Latin “hostis”, and even
If, however, we rotate 180 degrees, we can observe the past to
before from the greek “xenos”. It is a term that brings the idea
find that: "We all come from Africa, where 100,000 years ago,
of a guest who becomes extraneus because "with his presence
in the vicinity of what is now called Lake Turkana, in Kenya,
raises for discussion the main ingredients of my ordinary life,
lived a woman called Eva (an American geneticist, Rebecca
the logic and the language in which it is
Cann, analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of 147 persons, belonging to several ethnic groups, was able to identify a common ancestor: a prehistoric woman called Mitochondrial Eve). Since then, without a precise destination and barefoot, our ancestors went through the Middle East before separating:
organized. [....] A stranger, however, always appears with a double meaning: threat or gift. Neither one nor the other thing, but the one thing precisely as the other. "(Cit. U.Curi "Stranger").
some went West to Europe and others went East to Asia and then to America through the Bering Strait (when our ancestors began to explore the world, immense glaciers had absorbed enough water to reduce the level of the sea by 100 meters)." Source: COLORS N. 89 - Moving House Nowadays, to cover the same distance, we would need 26
In this sense Umberto Curi explains well how it is possible to understand the "fear" but also the added "value" given by the meeting of different cultures that improves the knowledge and understanding of each necessarily creating variety, and Beauty, as we will see later.
visas to overcome several border controls with biometric tools such as fingerprint, retinal control and blood tests. From 1914 to 2014 the number of countries on Earth has more than doubled: from 57 countries, the number rose to 195 with 8
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MESSICO - 2000
“A uniform should make us indistinguishable and instead, it produces the opposite effect, it empathizes even more the difference between one face and another. There only the face stands to express ourselves...� Tiziano Scarpa, Strabat Mater
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FRANCE – streets of Paris
BEAUTY
"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.� K.Gibran
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POLAND – Krakow 2007
“Beauty will save the world.” Fedor Dostoevskij, The Idiot
WILL BEAUTY SAVE THE WORLD? Rarely a sentence was as lucky as that one mentioned by
In fact, the analysis of beauty has always been the subject of
p r i n c e M y s h k i n i n “ t h e I d i o t ” ( o n e o f D o s t o y e v s k y ’s
non-exhaustive speeches and thesis, from ancient Greece to
masterpieces), but what does he mean by beauty? It is really
modern dialogue on aesthetics.
that beauty sensitive and end in itself to which we normally refer?
Already in a Pericles’ epitaph (Thucydides late fifth century BC.), as the philosopher Umberto Curi reminds us in his
Simone Weil said: « every time we reflect on beauty we come
“l’apparire del bello” (i.e. the appearance of beauty), to
up against a wall. Whatever people write about it is lamentably
commemorate soldiers fallen during the war in Peloponnesus
and evidently inadequate”.
and at the same time in an attempt to motivate troops to 11
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MAROCCO - 1996
ITALY - Sardinia
9 continue the war, there is a reference to odd arguments: “We, Athenians, love knowledge without tenderness and beauty with a good purpose�. It does not refer to a military, political or economic superiority but to the fact that Athenians are the best because cultivating two passions: one for culture and one for beauty. This beauty, however, is not the same as nowadays. It is a beauty with a good purpose, that beauty which derives from the one described by Homer about Odysseus’ vicissitudes wandering for 19 years to reach his lovely Ithaca without being enchanted by the beauty of many places and things because no woman is more beautiful than Penelope and no place is more beautiful than his dear homeland Ithaca. Who, after a long journey, did not take both pleasure and pain in coming back to his "home sweet home". This is not limited to the so-called 4 walls, but also to all the affections to which we are bound. At home, there are our memories, to which all objects within they refer to, around the house our friends can be and even our relatives.
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ENGLAND - London
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Here is just a feeling which is at the same time sad, for the conclusion of a journey, an experience that donates emotions, and happy to return to own affectivity, own ties, own life which make us understand the coexistence of opposites as roots on which a wall grows, a wall in front of we are when we talk about beauty Moreover, in the Idiot, Dostoyevsky brings up immediately this issue when, at the beginning of the story, he describes the landscape of Switzerland: “We came to Lucerne, and I was taken out in a boat. I felt how lovely it was, but the loveliness weighed upon me somehow or other, and made me feel melancholy…I always feel like that when I look at the beauties of nature for the first time; but then, I was ill at that time, of course!” Plotinus reminds us that the appearance of beauty is capable of experiencing opposing but complementary emotions: anger, pleasing terror, nostalgic desire, love, and anxiety mixed with pleasure. In one Greek word: "zauma", surprise accompanied by fear, wonder accompanied by fear, or dismay which brings pleasure too. Reverting to Simone Weill: "The essence of beauty lies in contradiction, scandal and not at all in appropriateness; but 14
GERMANY - Berlin
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it must be a scandal that forces itself upon one and fills the heart with joy� Returning to the original question: will beauty save the world? I could answer with a reminder of the Idiot of Dostoyevsky when he saw for the first time a photograph of the beautiful Natasja Filipovna, and said: “an extraordinary face! (...) It is a lofty face, very lofty, but I do not know whether it is good. Ah, if it was good too! It would be the salvation! " Have your say: which one of the following two portraits does express more beauty?
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RUSSIA - Moscow
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ITALY - Turin
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MAROCCO - 1996
VARIETY
"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow." Lev Tolstoj, Anna Karenina, 1877
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GUATEMALA - Chichicastenango’s market, 2000
VARIETY OF WHAT? The English painter William Hogarth in his treatise "The
within a variable experience. (cit. Wikipedia: The Analysis of
Analysis of Beauty", in 1753 pointed out, as one of the
Beauty).
fundamental principles for the achievement of beauty, the concept of variety defined in contrast to equality, namely the lack of variety offending all senses. As the ear is offended by a continuous note, so occurs when the eye is fixed on a point or on a blank wall. On the contrary, our senses find relief in discovering equalities and a certain amount of "identity"
Although Hogarth is the reflection of rich-bourgeois society of the neoclassicism British Empire with the 18th-century, you may agree with him that beauty was intrinsically linked to the variety of observations, which helps us follow a search path. And, as without it, you would easily fall into monotony.
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NEPAL - 1999
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The desire for knowledge drives man in the journey of life and moves photographer's eyes to seek out ever new elements, contrasts, similarities, recalls ... which are the basis of a successful image. Welfare, often hidden in multiplicity forms, appearances, expressions, and visible in portraits, is only a part of the infinite variety of the nonvisible.Any face becomes so much more than a mirror of the soul, but a real showcase of our way of being, in which the whole body actively participates. Furthermore there is everything that makes up the culture of people from habits to clothes, to constructions, to religions ... all those arguments cited as a reason for war to hide the true meaning of any suppressive action: power and money . Each of us takes part in the creation of variety that makes the world so pleasant to be discovered and makes so important the search for a solution to one of the main questions about the future: how to combine a global world with its deep social and cultural diversity? The only current viable solution seems to be the dissemination of knowledge. Therefore, let’s start the pursuit of human variety around the world accompanied by Giorgo Savio’s photographs.
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RUSSIA - Moscow, 2011
CONCLUSION
"The most beautiful, the simplest of all is the spontaneous reflex with which you try to stop a moment of joy that will disappear.", R. Doisneau
CONCLUSION
If it is true that the human being is the noblest subject of art,
"Beauty is Peace: just living in peace we can enjoy the beauty that life offers us ... The surest path to reach it is the acceptance of diversity." Anonymous his profile on a wall lighted by a lantern. Then her father gave
the portrait is the theme most exploited by artists.
a plastic consistency to the young profile filling the contours
The man, with his body, communicates and, with her face, expresses emotions thus assuming the power to transmit. A
with clay; Butade realized so the first realistic portrait and, for the daughter, a visible reminder of the young loved. "
face can make us fall in love, and excite more intensely in
Love becomes the primary cause of imitation and, probably,
relation to its ability to reflect a meaning that goes beyond the
even the impulse to make art.
mere similarity. If with paintings, for centuries, the portrait has been a search for absolute search of the real, with photography it has become something that necessarily becomes a symbol of something else (assuming the similarity). "Pliny the Elder, in 77 a.D. gives to the power of love the birth
The images in this book are representative of mutual love that we should feel towards our brothers around the world but, also, of a place, a culture, a unique personality and mandatorily linked to the historical moment when these photographs were taken.
of the first portrait: the daughter of Butade, a potter from Sicyon, was in love with a young man who had to go away. To preserve the image, one evening the girl traced the outlines of 81
The only point in common is the spontaneity of the everyday life. The photographer does simply take the transience of a moment and fix it in time to engage future reflections. In brief, the photographer is, and should be, a small selector of reality, as the photographer Abbas said: "I was born photographer ... I like to think that I am a person who writes with light, referring to the greek meaning of the term: photography [it consists of two terms: “photo" which derives from "phos" and it means "light" in english; “graphy” which probably derives from graphi, which can mean write or drawing]. I have no merit; I was only a witness of what was happening under my eyes. "
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Bibliography Source of aphorisms: http://aforismi.meglio.it COLORS n.89 - Moving House Umberto CURI, “Stranger”, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2010 Umberto CURI, “The appearance of beauty”, ed. Bollati Boringhieri, 2013 Tiziano SCARPA, “Strabat Mater”, ed. Einaudi, 2008 Fedor DOSTOEVSKIJ, “The Idiot”, ed. Einaudi, 2014 - first ed. 1869 William HOGARTH, “The Analysis of Beauty”, ed. Aesthetica, 2001 - first ed. 1753 Tiziano TERZANI, “Un altro giro di giostra”, ed. Longanesi & C., 2004 Mario CALABRESI, “A occhi aperti”, ed. Contrasto, 2013 Roland KANZ, “Portraits”, ed. Taschen, 2008 Ernst REBEL, “Self-portraits”, ed. Taschen, 2008
COPYRIGHTS www.saviobooks.com
Translation in English of cure Paolo Savio
First Edition: 2014 October
Copyright Š 2015 by Marco SAVIO
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is exclusively published in ebook format. If you think that a published picture is violating the privacy of someone, please contact marcosavioauthor@gmail.com. After appropriate verifications, the image could be removed and subsequently replaced with an updated version of the eBook.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I sincerely thank all those who have followed me in the realization of this eBook and in particular Giorgio Savio, whose visual talent was behind this idea. My special thanks goes also to my brother Paolo Savio, co-author and translator.
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To my sons Fabrizio and Nicolò with the hope that they will learn from this book, and, in particular, take at least a little passion for photography from their grand-father.
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In the digital age what meaning still have the photographers? “Everyone can have a pencil and a piece of paper, but poets are few.” Elliot Erwitt (from “A occhi aperti” by Mario Calabresi)
Giorgio SAVIO