Dialogue is the magic word that becomes the theme of the 14th edition of Mia Photo Fair BNP Paribas. And dialogue is certainly what photography has long established with other components: aesthetics, architectural forms, painting, artificial intelligence, post-production software. This important event ended last Sunday and we too intend to retrace it through the eyes of the photographers who most impressed us, anticipating that the list is subjective and necessarily partial.
Pelle Cass, “Volleyball at Northeastern University”, 2018, (“Crowded Fields” series), printed on heavy 100% rag paper with a matte finish, 60 x 90 cm, courtesy OTM Gallery
An engaging confirmation and an interesting novelty are proposed by the Cortona-based OTM Gallery, the backbone of the international festival Cortona on the Move. The confirmation is represented by the American Pelle Cass and his large crowded photographs (“Crowded Fields” is the title of his project) of figures performing the same gesture in a massive number of positions. To achieve this result, Cass places the camera on a tripod, takes thousands of photographs of the sports fields and assembles the selected figures in a final image that becomes a sort of crowded mosaic of bodies occupying the space in all directions. The interesting novelty, among others, proposed by the Tuscan gallery is the project by the Swiss photographer Léonie Rose Marion. With this thematic series that explores light pollution on nocturnal living beings, the photographer manages to harmonize very well the sense of her praiseworthy research with a disconcerting aesthetic sense. Moreover, Marion acts on the border between the rigor of science and the emotion of poetry, enhancing her message with a monochrome that invites us to reflect on how we, as human beings, impact nature.
Léonie Rose Marion, “Constellation 150”, 2024, (“Relever la nuit” series), inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Matt Baryta 308 gsm, 13 5x 97cm, courtesy OTM Gallery; Sara Rossi, “Perché”, (“ABC” series), 2013/2025, digital print on Hahnemühle paper, © the artist, courtesy Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting
“ABC” is the photographic project by Milanese Sara Rossi, presented by Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting. To the eye of the observer, the base of the photograph, a sort of horizon line, will appear at the height of a writing associated with an Italian place that is not entirely recognizable. The element of evidence is the advertising sign (also mutilated compared to its entirety), therefore the alphabetic sign, in which the peripheral Italian landscape declines, the object of Rossi’s investigation, capable of conferring a vividly poetic and alienating sensation to the photograph. Beba Stoppani presents a project that combines many reflections on our relationship with place and nature. Proposed by Milanese Red Lab Gallery, the thematic series called “Suspended/Sospeso” is, as the artist himself states, “a fluctuation between one step and another, between past and future”, through a dozen landscapes depicted on the border between photography and painting. Significant is the subseries numbered from #10 to #13 in which the photographer seems to “establish herself at the same height as what she includes in her gaze” (Giovanna Gammarota, curator), proposing arid landscapes with shades of beige and brown that are intentionally grainy but have a great visual impact.
Philip Shalam, Liverpool Street (“Refracted Lens” series), print on baryta paper mounted on 3 mm Dibond and 3mm acrylic, 80 x 120cm, © the artist, courtesy Levi Blanchaert gallery
“I’m a purist,” Philip Shalam tells me as he presents a selection of the projects “Refracted Lens” and “Metropolis” at the Levi Blanchaert Gallery stand. The purity the English photographer talks about refers to the non-use of artificial intelligence that, at a casual glance, would seem to be there. And instead his large photographic works are the result of an entirely physical collage: in the case of the first project, the artist takes many photos of the same subject, prints, cuts, recomposes and creates final images that are destructured and with a magnetic poetic capacity. In the case of the “Metropolis” project, the same atelier technique is adapted to a multitude of shots of different subjects to have a final result that is only apparently disturbing, on the border between dreamlike dimension, photography and architecture.
Phillip Toledano, “Polite extra slim the smoking head 1”, 2024, © Phillip Toledano, courtesy Tallulah Studio Art
Among the most interesting proposals for the use of artificial intelligence, we were particularly convinced by the project (which was born from a photography book) “Another America”, in which the English photographer Phillip Toledano reinterprets history (both that of the people of New York portrayed in images with a powerful impact and the great History with a capital H) with the use of A.I. Proposed by the Milanese gallery Tallulah Studio Art, Toledano accompanies his project with broad reflections on the boundary between plausibility and reality, between real and revised historical narrative. The hold of A.I. on contemporary art is very strong, says the photographer: if everything can be true, then nothing really is. His large photographs, especially the black and white ones with vintage subjects, are truly engaging and manage to convey a disturbing sensation of how easy it is to construct a truth.
Camilla Gurgone, “Process to shape the imaginary” n°4 and n°5, 2024, courtesy Viasaterna
Camilla Gurgone, a young photographer from Lucca with an interesting list of achievements under her belt and proposed by Milanese Viasaterna, originally declines A.I. in a project that seeks to give shape to the imaginary. “Process to Shape the Imaginary” starts from the question of what the matter of one’s dreams is and the artist searches for its elements through a true virtual full immersion that she then reproduces, in tune with the evanescence of dream activity, on thermal paper that is also destined (together with the work of art and the primordial matter of the dream) to dissolve over time. The effect on the observer is magnetic: this maniacal attempt to connect a human and personal activity (the dream) with the surrounding world is very engaging and recalls the Calvinian lightness in which the photographer effectively glides into the work of art.
Roberto Salbitani, “Venezia, Circumnavigazioni e derive”, 1990, silver salt print, 36,5 x 36,5 cm, © the artist, courtesy Cartacea Galleria Stampa ai sali d’argento
This anthological promenade ends with a solid certainty. Proposed by the Bergamo gallery Cartacea, Roberto Salbitani shows us his gaze on Venice (here portrayed in a series of tondi ‘decanted’ for about 40 years, from the 70s to the early 2000s), Etna and the Bomarzo Park. The effect of the works is fascinating, we find ourselves in front of an analogical synthesis of water, fire and stone, a synthesis “not framed in the etymological sense of the term” and therefore with a highly sacred aspect, oscillating between the epiphanic effect of the vision and a dark and hidden core.
Info:
I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.
NO COMMENT