I Quaderni di Gente di Fotografia

There is an order in things, a right measure, a balance.
And if not, if chaos, dissarray were to regulate nature, society, up to the humanized landscape, then Paolo Ferrari’s gaze intervenes to find the matter in disorganized objectivity, the primordial substance for the creation of one’s own ordered world, one’s own cosmos. Just as ancient philosophers drew from sensorial data to discuss the world of the invisible, so in the author’s shots the collected reality comes to life and takes shape, transforming itself into a metaphor of animated, indeed humanized, everyday life, open to the gaze. Contemplation is therefore the starting point and the arrival point; the absence of excess determines a classic vision of elegance, serenity and balance. Consistently with this assumption, the attraction that the ordered cosmos exercises on man, by virtue of the beauty it expresses, has always been linked to the idea of eidos form, which coincides with the “thing seen”. And why not translate the concept into the “thing photographed”? The gaze sees, chooses, collects, stops time and creates space.
(from the text by Stefania Lasagni)

The shattering charm of a swing, a leap into the void, that vertigo like an inebriation which – averting me from the real world and the rational sphere – takes me to that suspended Middle Earth, to the edge of an imponderable abyss in whose darkness the whirlpool of life appears to me. It’s impossible to escape this game capable of awakening a sense of wonder, in a sort of monologue between me and myself, which investigates the many facets of the nature of things. Through shadows and reflections I realize that by removing myself from the things that surround me, I give them back their original dignity and, with it, also an autonomy from my attention, from my energy, which frees them and allows them to soar. The world becomes a mirror of my most hidden contents and my projections, in a completely unconscious and involuntary way. Windows as observation and dialogue points. Flights of flocks that arouse my imagination. Contexts aimed at making me listen to the extraordinary symphony of existence.
Paolo Ferrari’s book is written with photography as communication based on the transmission of authentic messages, faithful to the author’s being and impossible to enclose in the mere convention of speech.
(from the text by Daniela Bazzani)

There are places where the past and the present meet and almost merge into a plot whose charm is hard to resist. The rain wets the car wind shield with small, boring drops, transforming it into a screen on which the images flow in black and white full of an ancient attraction. The photographer's gaze crosses it to linger on a landscape whose geometric rigour he captures: the bridge that defines the horizon has the imposing solemnity of a church facade but the image becomes dynamic in the lower part crossed diagonally as it is by the line of the parapet that runs along the Naviglio. Today the rare passers-by pay a distracted glance to that iron, those tie rods, those bolts. Yet these elements still retain the signs of an ancient civilization where iron represented modernity, the strength that knew how to resist the ravages of time, the challenge to the future, the same audacity that still characterizes the arches of the railway stations. Andrea Calestani approaches the Navigli with the curiosity of someone who has already experienced Milan in distant years but who is now rediscovering it when faced with places he had never visited.

(from the introduction by Roberto Mutti)

Someone who is called Lenin must have a certain destiny. Strong is the imprinting, the connotation of the struggle of the peasants, the popular conscience, the great Communist dream dashed upon the rocks of Soviet dictatorship, but which in our Emilia part of the Po valley, has remained an unrealised utopia. Therefore, those who bear what is more of an honour than a burden may be understood if they dedicate their existence to the simple life of the fields, painted with the colours of the countryside, scented with the smell of hay and stables, framed by the sunsets when the grass changes colour. It is the work in the fields and the peace of nature that brings humans closer to poetry. The poetry of things and the soul, a language that feeds on the vibrations of the damp, fertile earth which at other times is also arid.[...]

The photographic gaze of Paolo Simonazzi perfectly captures the nature of the objects and brings them back to life in their essence made of pastel colours, creative chaos, fragments of a lived life. The opaque mirror which reflects the old typewriter, the brass lamp that hangs from a ceiling of warn beams, the old broken down Jaguar, almost an oxymoron in the proletarian context it is nestled in, the stable with its crooked doors opened out where the animals feed on light and freedom far from the dark mechanised farms, the bizarre clock with the image of Che Guevara on the handmade doily on the dresser, the pendulum on the wall and the old photo of a football team in black-and-white: this is the universe that lives again thanks to the sensitive exploring lens of Simonazzi, the world of objects that seem to stand guard with silent testimony over the peaceful passing of the seasons, when, after the winter, as Zucchero Fornaciari, another child of these lands, sings, the snowfields bloom. A small world, but with a great heart.

Giuseppe Pagano’s journey in the world of Alberto Giacometti commences with the small stones placed on the sculptor’s grave, in Stampa, at the local cemetery surrounded by the high rock faces of Val Bregaglia. From that moment on, and on several occasions, he keeps returning to this valley in pursuit of the evidence of a suspended transition: “I could feel that that place was calling me” – he said – “everywhere I looked I could see unequivocal signs, as though his presence were blocked in that place”. It is only through death that man is, in some way, freed. Death makes life solemn and so, as Berger says, “the essence of Giacometti’s work is the awareness of death”.

If each narrative, as Algirdas J. Greimas states, has thresholds, then cities too have entrances, borders and contours. Naples has often been conquered from below, taking advantage of its ancient Greek aqueduct to enter the city; in fact Naples has an underground and conspicuous contour with no light, made of age-old, dark waters. For centuriesmits beauties have been approached by the sea, then inland journey being long and tiresome. And if the old heart of the city beats without the sun and sea, as in Caravaggio’s paintings and Anna Maria Ortese’s novels, its contours, even the most distant ones like those of the splendid Campi Flegrei, are rather flooded by light. \...\
Carlo Desideri has done a radiograph of its coasts and novelists, pursuing through his photographs those places which have been endlessly described by writers and voyagers.

Nocturnal places like suggestions which surface from the darkness of a virtual canvas. Unusual dwellings and spaces in which the lunar, artificial light seems to blend with the wind to create new forms and original visions, in which the invisible becomes perceptible... or perhaps these are simply moods, amplified by the dark.

When Luigi Ghirri was organizing the exhibition Viaggio in Italia (1984), Giuliano Ferrari was still at the very beginning of his professional career, but photography had been at the centre of his attention for some time already and he had certainly not missed the novel proposals in that collective exhibition. […] The decision to work on the topic of travel was not a casual one, because in the European culture, at least since the Renaissance period, travel in Italy was considered a way of getting to know the main cultural models: antique ruins, great Renaissance paintings and landscapes in general. Travelling was thus a way of getting to know, gaining this knowledge is not merely a question of seeing but requires a mental effort to make a critical observation in order to memorise, it stimulates any doubts we have on the cause and consequences of the things we see and leads us to compare our own experiences with our new knowledge.