David Levi Strauss’s brief publication Why Do We Believe in Photographs dates back to 2021. Although lacking a question mark, its title presents a vivid doubt directed at photography, understood as a mimesis of the real world. It serves as a warning, aiming to demonstrate how this practice originates from a history not known as it appears, but as a doubt about the belief in looking. This theme is developed in Stefano Cerio’s solo exhibition Corpi d’aria, curated by Stefano Chiodi, currently on display at Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto until November 2, 2025. The museum showcases photographs from the Aquila and Brenva series, named after the landscapes where they were taken.
Stefano Cerio, “Corpi d’aria”, installation view at Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, 2025, courtesy the artist, ph. credit Giuliano Vaccai
Although these landscapes lack traces of life, Cerio suggests such presence, as it is precisely the subdued and invisible human action that is photographed. Therefore, just as the melting of the Brenva glacier at the foot of Mont Blanc is caused by global policies detrimental to environmental protection, the deserted morphology of the uninhabited territory between Campo Felice, Campo Imperatore and Pescasseroli is populated by inflatable structures, alluding to a form of artificial entertainment typical of mass culture. As noted by Stefano Chiodi in the critical text of the catalog published by Quodlibet, the photographs are not only a reflection on the ecology of a territory but also a work addressing its geographical traumas – both in the gradual melting of the Brenva and in documenting an area particularly shaken by the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. However, Cerio does not intend to document but to decontextualize and recontextualize in infinite destabilizing references.
Stefano Cerio, “Corpi d’aria”, installation view at Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, 2025, courtesy the artist, ph. credit Giuliano Vaccai
Although the photographer’s practice is deeply tied to reflecting on the sense of place as a physical entity, he uncovers an exclusively mental perception through engaging and disorienting environmental installations of a cerebral world filled with a mysterious enigma. Thus, the question raised is how, for Cerio, the aforementioned question by Strauss – derived from the saying “seeing is believing”, first appearing in a 1609 manuscript held at the Trinity College Library in Cambridge – is inverted. Therefore, it is not certain that to discover the morphology of a landscape, we must necessarily see it in a photograph. If the Brenva glacier is no longer visible, it does not mean it no longer exists, as for the photographer, everything is reconstructible and still traversable with the eyes. The same applies to the territories of L’Aquila; the landscapes populated by inflatables are absurd, and although rendered with a cold meticulousness of objectivity, we are asked to believe them true even before seeing them in person. This creates an ambiguous sense of surprise that unites the physical and the unreal, so the photographs present themselves not so much as a fantastic act nor as a nightmare, but rather as a raw fantasy, jarring to the eye for its surreality.
Stefano Cerio, “Brenva 1”, 2023, pigment print, 110 x 140 cm, courtesy the artist
This dreamy detachment from the actual, along with the search for something that has disappeared, presented in a discordance of elements, vaguely recalls the incongruity typical of the metaphysical poetics from the 1970s. In particular, that related to Giorgio De Chirico’s Fontana bagni misteriosi (1973), a project dedicated to an urban sculpture that acutely addresses the relationship between the urban environment and the now-lost connection with nature. As archival documents from the Triennale di Milano recount, De Chirico’s project is «an example of a balance between the natural and the artificial». Similarly, for Cerio, the real becomes a function of its representation, a form of montage in which the image is conceived from the perspective of knowledge regarding what has morphologically marked the territory and its history. Thus, a fatal play begins between relationships: one looks at the complex but also at the macro-realism of natural rocks and lichens, in whose catalog Quodlibet offers an in-depth reading by Riccardo Venturi.
Stefano Cerio, “Aquila 2”, 2019, pigment print, 110 x 140 cm, courtesy the artist
Alternating lyricism and rawness, memory and inventive play, an ineffable imaginary is generated, whose utopian strength lies precisely in the montage of inflatables that deflate and bend with the fragility of a boneless body. Although these plastics are filled with compressed air, they bear witness to a dramatically transient reality, ready to die with the prior awareness that they will not provide amusement for any child. Thus, the question that arises spontaneously is: why these metaphysical juxtapositions? The answer lies not only in the aforementioned metaphysical oppositions but also in Cerio’s approach, which reveals how to be photographers, one need not be neutral, nor masters, but must be seekers, perhaps solitary monks with skin sensitive to the cold of Brenva and L’Aquila, with an eye that does not intend to look beyond but to focus on what remains. Therefore, his gaze is not so mobile; it is frontal, of wide view, capable of analyzing and acquiring a balanced image devoid of disturbing elements, focused on the essential synthesis concerning narration.
Stefano Cerio, “Aquila 8”, 2019, pigment print, 110 x 140 cm, courtesy the artist
It seems Cerio is aware that his photographic practice aims to reveal, not to save. Yet, there might be a risk of losing oneself in a work that could become repetitive. However, the photographer does not fear this: in these images prevails a slow narration, typical of an eye that glides gently over the landscape. It is a suspended tale of a place reached by a one-way journey; thus, to the sight, the acrid smell of the earth and the mineral scent of the fog are perceptible, all natural elements that end up possessing the reason for a contemplation towards a territorial liturgy of what is on the verge of ending, otherwise in the phase of disappearance. However, in the silence of these images, one does not seek an intimate confession nor an absolute denunciation; it is rather a story that, unknown as it is supposed, has been told to be believed as it is seen. Therefore, the overlays and landscape montages, in addition to constructing a sinister metaphysica dimension, push us to ask whether the gaze of those who have lived from within.
Info:
Stefano Cerio. Corpi d’aria
curated by Stefano Chiodi
28/06/2025 – 02/11/2025
Opening hours: Wednesday to Monday 10:30-13:00 / 14:30-18:00
Palazzo Collicola, Piazza Collicola, Spoleto (PG)
www.palazzocollicola.it
Maria Vittoria Pinotti (1986, San Benedetto del Tronto) is an art historian, author, and independent critic. She currently is the coordinator of Claudio Abate’s photographic archive and Manager at Elena Bellantoni’s Studio. From 2016 to 2023 she was the Gallery Manager in a gallery in the historic center of Rome. She has worked with ministerial offices such as the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture and the Central State Archive. Currently, she collaborates with cultural sector magazines, focusing on in-depth thematic studies dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
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