Mario Giacomelli Under the Skin of Reality - Treasures from the Sassoferrato Archive by Schilt Publishing

ISBN 978 90 5330 813 4 © 2015 Archivio Mario Giacomelli, Sassoferrato (Ancona) www.archiviomariogiacomelli.it © 2015 (for the English edition) Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam www.schiltpublishing.com Original title and publisher Mario Giacomelli – Sotto la pelle del reale

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Cover From the series Poems in search of an author Translation Italian-English Valentina Scaramella, London www.valentinascaramella.com

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Summary

A double gaze Achille Bonito Oliva

A sensitive soul The photographs in the Mario Giacomelli Archive in Sassoferrato Marina Itolli

Under the skin of reality Katiuscia Biondi

Poems in search of an author (1970/2000)

Theme inspired by the cutting of a tree (1967-1969)

31st December (1997)

Fable, carrying possible inner meanings (1983-1984)

Metamorphosis of the land (1955-1980)

Becoming aware of nature (1997-2000)

118

Announcement (1997-1999)

136

The Sunday before (2000)

144

Biography

A double gaze Achille Bonito Oliva

When it comes to art history, we are used to considering this subject as a practice involving the eye that subjectively models reality in its own image and likeness, using language as a tool. Images are always the consequence of a twist of the eye of our imagination bending around its own visual field, of a movement that is inevitably subjective and emotional. On the other hand, photography has introduced a non-emotional approach, a mentality that seems to calculate things better while ripping reality open. A common cliché associates photography with cruel objectivity, like a surgical practice that dissects, cuts and removes details from its network of relations with the external world. Therefore, according to such a distribution of roles, the artist is the eccentric eye while the photographer represents the objective counterpart. Art has the privilege to indulge in the luxury of subjectivity, while photography has the task of developing an impossible, impassive attitude of neutrality. Mario Giacomelli established a relationship with the lifestyle and world of artists and overturned this preconception, introducing a new twist in the field of photographic imagery. Such a twist is typical of the process of anamorphosis, which marks the history of painting and exclusively uses the tools of photographic language, as highlighted in Katiuscia Biondi’s images and witty texts about the final years of his research. His themes were other people’s lives, but also contemporary art expressions such as performance and land art, as well as abstract and informal art. He entered a duel – that of the institution represented by the photographer facing the elements. Nevertheless, he didn’t shoot precipitously. Instead, he triggered a series of reactions and reflections, reaching the image through a process of mental slowdown and adopting a position of laterality with respect

A d o u b l e g a ze

to his device. The photo is no longer random or instant, instead becoming the result of a pose that complicates the target landscape, object or scene, thus creating ambiguity. A torsion, typical of anamorphosis, has crumpled and modified the image in an attempt to add eccentricity to the vision. Even if the final result was the obscuration and interdiction of the frontal vision of the work, the executive process required a certain constructive rigor. Giacomelli has positioned his model along a specific artistic dimension, so that it has become the target only after a series of specular rebounds, in the glossy alveolus of a landscape, a body in movement, a tangle of lines or silent leaves. This way, the subject loses its proportions and acquires a sinuosity and flexibility that adapts to the space where it sought shelter after such mirror-like reflections. The anamorphosis was strictly built as a spatial organization, as a real event as opposed to a product of the cold use of photographic equipment to create distortion games through the wide-angle lens. The transfer of the image on paper has opened up the possibility of including it in a more culturally complex vision and thus making it part of a tradition that is closer to figurative art. Giacomelli’s work is based on multiple operational moments, to plan a scene that is initially built and then captured by the same photographic eye. The eye has therefore accepted the illness, the introduction of an imagery that has arranged subjects according to a spatial rigor that is directly connected to the photographic result, and subsequently captures them using a specific optic. Finally, photography preorders reality using this artifice to capture the event without surprise or improvisation, but with the expectation of an image that reflects a subjective view emotionally.

A sensitive soul The photographs in the Mario Giacomelli archive in Sassoferrato Marina Itolli

All books are born out of necessity and this one is no exception, answering the need to shape into an intelligible form the emotional wave that the immersion in Mario Giacomelli’s archive may cause. This particular part of the collection is kept in Sassoferrato, inside a farmhouse surrounded by rough terrain, as harsh as many of the artist’s landscapes. This archive, owned by Rita Giacomelli and curated by Katiuscia Biondi, remained almost dormant over the past decade, left in semi-darkened rooms overlooking the blinding light of the countryside. Inside, there are approximately 12,000 original prints, mostly in the classic 30x40 format. Overall, the archive represents about a quarter of Giacomelli’s production, and includes related specimens and negatives. This extraordinary treasure trove features twenty series, covering the photographer’s entire artistic life story, starting in Puglia in 1958, followed by a part of his production in a hospice in the series Io ti vidi fanciulla (I saw you as a young maiden) and La zia di Franco (Franco’s aunt), both taken and printed between 1982 and 1983 and arranged in two distinct series in 1993. The archive contains many series that are crucial from the point of view of the author’s creative history, such as Motivo suggerito dal taglio di un albero (Theme inspired by the cutting of a tree) in 1967, the ﬁrst of his ‘abstract’ series, or Caroline Branson (Spoon River) (1968/1973), which marks the beginning of a production inspired by poems and the introduction of a language based on combination shots, the recovery of images and their relocation - also from a semantic viewpoint - in subsequent series. Then there are about 800 landscapes, photographed between the sixties and 2000, in particular those found within Presa di coscienza sulla natura (Becoming aware of nature, abstract aerial landscapes), Metamorfosi della terra (which witnesses Giacomelli’s return to the same places over time to capture their changes, and includes dozens of photos of the same farmhouse in an agricultural scenario that changes during different seasons and plantation periods), and aerial landscapes taken while travelling across France and Spain. Finally, there is a large group of series dating back to the nineties, of which Bando (Announcement) is certainly the best known. Some are unpublished, like Le

A sensitive soul

mie Marche (a series about the Marche region, which comprises 311 elements concerning the sea and was put together during the seventies and eighties); or 31 Dicembre (31st December), which comprises 90 elements gathered in 1997. This latter series is perhaps one of the strongest, as it condenses all of the biographical and creative experience of the author. A day in the archive of a great author is an opportunity that every photography enthusiast dreams of. In particular, looking at Giacomelli’s photos, we cannot avoid recalling his words: “Every time I see [the photos] I cry. Not about my skill, [...] but for the joy of having come across such beautiful images ... Because I wanted these photos to be full of joy, the joy of a different world, the world that I created with my own blacks and whites.” You actually enter a different world, then cry with the author, sharing his enthusiasm and wonder for every new image that is revealed. In the case of this particular archive, the emotion is mixed with surprise. It’s astonishing to see how much of the material had already been prepared, tidied, and made ready to be published and exhibited, but never saw the light of day due to a lack of time or opportunity. Here, the voice of one of the most beloved and powerful Italian photographers can still be heard and is ready to continue its interrupted dialogue and actualize the photographer’s themes through new visions. One of the peculiarities of the Sassoferrato archive is the noticeable prevalence of materials collected in the last two decades of Giacomelli’s life. This provides a new and valuable overview of a less known period of production, and provides us with a full understanding of his uniqueness in the Italian photography scene, thus allowing us to re-read past works with new tools and re-discover meanings that had gradually been lost over the years. From the eighties onwards, Giacomelli made the autobiographical element and inner world experience the main topic of his work. By this time his interest in photographing people had long since faded, with the exception of a few friends willing to go along with his visions. Later on, he also lost interest in capturing landscapes, an activity he gradually abandoned with the advance of agriculture technology. These areas had become trivial and remote from the interweaving story-telling

Under the skin of reality Katiuscia Biondi Director of the Mario Giacomelli Archive in Sassoferrato

1 See. R. E. Krauss, Notes on the index, in “October”, New York, spring 1977. 2 If there wasn’t a world to photograph, pictures would not exist. In fact, the meaning of each picture is attached to the particular event that has been captured. It’s the same for the shifters mentioned by Rosalind E. Krauss. “Shifter is the term used by Jakobson to indicate a linguistic sign that is ‘filled with meaning’ only because it is ‘empty’. [...] The personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ are also shifters. When we dialogue, ‘I’ and ‘you’ keep shifting place during our conversation. I refer to myself as ‘I’ only when I’m speaking. When it’s your turn, ‘I’ means you.” In R. E. Krauss, Notes on the index, quote, 3rd par. 3 J. Lacan, Scritti, Einaudi, Turin 1974, p. 88. 4 In Italy during the 50s, some techniques were considered inadmissible: his backlit, grainy, blurry photos and his unique white-burning technique caused a stir and made Giacomelli an artist of his own kind from the beginning. 5 Although Giacomelli didn’t usually leave his home town, his master Giuseppe Cavalli provided him with an overview of the art scene in the 50s by introducing the young artist to the main photographic movements developing in Italy during those years, while encouraging him to take part in photo competitions. He also initiated him to music, philosophy, painting, and poetry. Another important step is Giacomelli’s participation (as a painter) in a cultural group that had formed in Senigallia at the end of the 50s, and included a dozen painters (including Ciacci, Gatti, Marinelli, Donati, Moroni, Genovali, Manservigi and Giacomelli) who gathered to show their work and discuss painting and Informal art. Such discussions continued until the 70s/80s between the photographer and prof. Genovali. Other important influences include his friendship with Alberto Burri and with Luigi Crocenzi in the 60s, contact with Enzo Cucchi, collecting art from the 80s onwards. Not to mention the thousands of copies of catalogues sent by other artists from around the world. Moreover, Giacomelli’s strong interest in painting is evidenced by his copious critical contribution to catalogues of painting exhibitions (mostly abstract painters) and by his extensive art collections. 6 As far as the alter ego is concerned, it is interesting to draw a parallel with Duchamp, see. R. E. Krauss, Notes on the index, quote, par. 8. 7 I have already explained in detail another kind of alter ego, noticeable in the unique collaboration between Giacomelli and Enea Discepoli for the photographic series on Tibet. In K. Biondi, Mario Giacomelli. La terra dalle ombre lunghe (The land of the long shadows), Artecom, Senigallia 2011. 8 R. E. Krauss, Notes on the index, quote, par. 8. In the original text, Krauss uses the term ‘words’ rather than ‘images’ when talking about Duchamp’s work. 9 About Duchamp’s en travesti photographic self-portraits analyzed by R. E. Krauss: “the Machine Optique sentence performs an outrage [...] on the body of language, at least as regards its power of signification. In the phrase ‘estimons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis’ (“we appreciate the bruising of the Eskimos’ delightful words”), overloaded with internal rhymes, the process of signification is replaced with pure musicality. The elimination and reversal of the ‘es’, ‘ex’ and ‘mo’ sounds can alter the meaning with an exaggerated formalism. The confusion related to the shifter is then combined with another kind of instability, as the form begins to erode the confidence of the contents“, in RE Krauss, Notes on the index, quote, par. 8. 10 Because what she saw in the portraits was not the man she lived with, Bastari’s wife hated these pictures so much that she tore apart all the proofs Giacomelli had delivered him.

After viewing Mario Giacomelli’s photographic work in its entirety, reading the artist’s manuscripts, analyzing his notes, and listening to interviews, it is now possible to provide a guide on how to understand the artistic method of one of the great masters of photography. The key is to enter the infinite and indefinable dimension that the artist longs for and which, on closer inspection, emerges in every aspect of Giacomelli’s production. Giacomelli’s photography does not intend to declare “this happened in a particular place and time.” Instead, it absorbs subjects which are chosen solely for their interrelationships and which are constantly changed and moved using different methods. For instance, the artist moves his subjects from one print to another by photographing previous photos and using combination shots, thus obtaining images in which subjects belonging to the present are placed in a scene depicting the past. In addition, sometimes old photos are inserted in a new series or modified in the dark room with acids, thus changing the fabric of reality. Over his fifty years of production, Giacomelli constantly returns to ancestral signs like the circle, the square, the ‘x’. Meanwhile, scars and wrinkles mark the artist’s subjects and landscapes. Subjects are placed out of their chronological and historical order (taken out of context by corroded whites and made two-dimensional via the use of a flash during the day or a telephoto lens), to recreate a network, a continuum of signs and symbols. The less the picture is intended to witness (and Giacomelli’s work was certainly not a reportage), the more the photographed subjects can move freely inside as pure signifiers, whose meaning is determined by their multiple, repeated and remodeled interrelations. Technically, this dimension is rendered by taking the nature of photography to the extreme: its being ‘index’,1 presenting itself as void/empty.2 The emptiness of photography is exaggerated by the artist when he treats his photographic subjects just like the shifters (see note 2) of a child struggling with the construction of a

Under the skin of realit y

separate self, during the ‘mirror stage’.3 Here the shifters do not work yet, due to ‘confusion’ between the subject and the surrounding world that has not yet been overcome. In Giacomelli’s case, his so-called ‘mistakes’4 reveal his state of disorientation when facing the elusiveness of this world (the inexorable ‘other-than self’) and the resulting commitment to creating a parallel dimension in which the indistinct (in photography) exceeds the stalemate produced by a multiplicity of other selves (in reality). Now, the question of the impossibility of appointing a unique ‘I’ and a well-defined objectuality once and for all reflects the malaise of a historical era, the 20th century.5 With Giacomelli, this difficulty is manifested in the “division of the ego into an ‘I’ and a ‘you’ through the adoption of an alter ego”,6 which appears so striking in the last series Poesie in cerca d’autore (1970/2000), 31 Dicembre (1997) and Questo ricordo lo vorrei raccontare (I would like to tell this memory,1999/2000), where Giacomelli wears a mask and is photographed while acting. However, already in the Vita del Pittore Bastari (Life of Bastari, the painter, 1992/1993) and in Passato (The Past, 1987/1990),7 the alter ego overlooked the scene through the two protagonists, who visit the places photographed by Giacomelli in the course of his life. The fragmentation of the self is determined by the split in an alter ego that hides/reveals its non-unique identity through “a strategy of alteration of language associated with a confusion in the way [images] denote their referents.”8 The fragmented subject speaks between the folds of an extreme formalism that “upsets the balance of meaning.”9 The subject is decontextualized, its features are altered and sometimes even unrecognizable10, tied to a chain of signifiers that lead the particular into the universal, the individual subject in the set of all subjects, the single photo in the whole production. The subject is distorted, sometimes a monster created with combination shots or strong contrasts, phantasmal, depersonalized, filled with a sense that differs from its daily reality outside of the photograph. In the case of the construc-

Poems in search of an author Poesie in cerca dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;autore 1970/2000

31 December 31 dicembre 1997

31s t D e c e m b e r

Fable, carrying possible inner meanings Favola, verso possibili signiďŹ cati interiori 1983-1984

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You have to replace the iron with your own meanings, your imagination is able to tell a story based on your personal meanings.â&#x20AC;? 74