| Photographic
Frescoes
Sometimes we have the rare fortune of coming across
wonderful photographs of landscape as the ones that
now Luigi Biagini proposes to us. We are asking to ourselves
though, considered also the innate beauty of the landscape
itself, if the merit has to go to the photographer or
to Mother Nature, which is offering us such wonders.
I think that the answer is, as it often happens, in
media res (in the middle): the professionality of the
skilled photographer was able to catch with an expert
and purposely educated eye the unique perspectives of
the Tuscan landscapes. Although - and it is this that
captures our attention - this is not only about fixing
an image on the film, but rendering the atmosphere of
the moment in which that determinate image has been
caught. The ephemeral impalpability of the morning mist,
the lake made mirror at the skimming light of the sunset,
the clods of dry earth underneath the heat of the sun
... situations that could automatically enter in ourselves
if rendered in colors, but that here, instead, have
been filtered by the black and white. And is this that
makes them special, true “photographic frescoes”,
where the atmosphere wins on the color, and the heart
on the eye ...
There was somebody, at the almost dawn of photography,
that has been considered the father of this technique,
both for his capacity of enjoying immensely the moment
and the site he was living while he was photographing,
and for his unsurpassed technical ability. His name,
after one hundred years from his birth, remains a myth,
the one of Ansel Adams. Now Biagini, on Ansel Adams’
footsteps, instead of Yosemite proposes to us the 'California
of Italy’, the most pure and least contaminated
Tuscany, where, instead of gold diggers, it seems to
see coming out by horse, on the silky mantle of grass
of one of these pleasant hills, a sumptuous cortege
of knights, in the manner of Benozzo Gozzoli, or, on
the other side of the field, it seems we could glimpse
Saint Francis while is exploring Sister Earth.
This celebration of the landscape, in its still immensity,
introduces us to familiar atmospheres, made of timeless
cottages and bales of hay, of regular rows of cypress
trees on the edge of the hill, with their long shadows
laid down with care on one side, suspended between earth
and sky.
The photographs by Luigi Biagini calls us to enter in
these landscapes, to take the first white road and follow
it until that infinity which dies in the clouds. And
in doing this, it seems that we become white as well,
full of dust, while a tepid breeze, which moves the
declivities, as they were seas, brings to us the scents
of the soil and history. In fact, what makes similar
the two photographers and cultures, is not only their
technique, but also their desire of rendering the immutability
of time in the unaltered permanence of the landscape
in the centuries - or at least this is the impression.
It is an invitation to draw a deep breath in order to
taste all of this perfume of freedom.
Valentina Fogher
Curator Museo ItaloAmericano
San Francisco, Ca, USA |
