If it is common to say that those who photograph in Italy are a bit of a son of Luigi Ghirri, we need to set our compass in the direction of Reggio Emilia, and precisely on the first floor of Palazzo dei Musei Civici. The visitors will find themselves in front of over 260 photographs, partial fruit of the activity of 36 authors, Italian and foreign, with the same fil rouge of belonging: the original experience of investigation into the transformations of the Emilian territory carried out by Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea. An investigation that, it should not be forgotten, has embodied one of the most significant public commission projects and that today is part of the deposit of the collection of Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea in the Photo Library of the municipal Panizzi Library.

Bas Princen, from the “Galleria naturale” series, 2007, ph. courtesy Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea

“On Borders/Sui Confini” is the title of this unmissable project that, in the land and landscapes of Luigi Ghirri’s soul, leads us by the hand into these images that capture a territory subject to profound profound urban, landscape, human and social transformations. Curated by personalities with a vast photographic curriculum such as William Guerrieri and Ilaria Campioli, with the professional contribution of a sector archivist such as Monica Leoni, the exhibition offers a very broad overview of subjects and poetics that enhance the traditional public-private synergy of the Emilian territory, thus providing an example of a useful practice to replicate. Continuing with the numbers, it is essential, to orient oneself, to point out that the exhibition is divided into nine sections, seven of which are classically exhibited, to which are added the two precious areas dedicated to examples of archive and collection of the vast material of Linea di Confine acquired by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, promoter with the Museums and the Library of the exhibition.

Olivo Barbieri, from the “Cavriago” series, 1991, ph. courtesy Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea

Describing the 260 works on display in a critical contribution is certainly a tedious exercise for the reader and therefore we will try to make an overview (speaking of photographic terminology…) of the seven sections exhibited, premising from the outset that the archive and the collection also offer essential insights to understand what lies behind a photographic project of substance and rigorous in theme and organization. Among the activities of the association in the 90s, the Photography Workshops stand out, of which we can see a summary in the first section of the exhibition, workshops entrusted to Italian photographers such as Guido Guidi and Olivo Barbieri, to Europeans such as Michael Schmidt and Americans such as Stephen Shore belonging to the “New Topographics” movement. For the two Italian photographers, we can respectively cite the impulse to document the transformation of fragile places such as riverbeds and nearby banks (Guidi with his research on the floodplains of the Secchia river) and the luminosity that buildings of modest architectural quality can acquire (with Barbieri’s trip to Cavriago). Correggio was instead the conceptual theatre of Schmidt’s investigation while Shore retraced the footsteps of the ‘poor but beautiful’ of his compatriot Paul Strand who, in Luzzara and together with Cesare Zavattini, gave life four decades earlier to the project of valorising the subaltern classes.

Gilbert Fastenaekens, from the “Fiorano Modenese” series, 2000, ph. courtesy Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea

Marc Augé, in his detailed definition of non-places, stated that they are not places without human presence, but rather anthropized but not identity-based, nor relational, nor even historical. The anthology of images in the second section, dedicated to the places and non-places of the Via Emilia in the early 2000s, starts from this concept. The photos on display are very interesting, among which we mention an impressive and futuristic vision of the checkouts of a hypermarket opened in those years, the fruit of the eye of Olivo Barbieri, and the simple but not simplistic GPS coding of the photographs by Paola De Pietri that investigates a landscape apparently empty of references. Olivo Barbieri also returns in the third section with a disturbing photo of the interiors of a car factory: using the selective focus technique, the photographer exalts an epochal passage – that of the introduction of robotics – at the moment in which plants and decorations are visible in an environment increasingly empty of workers. We are in the third section, entitled Work in Progress.

William Guerrieri, Archivio Camera del lavoro, from the “Work in Progress” series, 2004, ph. courtesy Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea

Counterbalancing Barbieri’s disorientation is a luminous story in broken images by William Guerrieri, who shows us workers on the march. In 2005, the investigation focuses on the doctor-patient relationship inside the now former Sant’Agostino-Estense Hospital in Modena. Among the significant elements of this section entitled Places of Care, there is the involuntarily predictive and very reflective one of how decisive this relationship would be starting from February 2020. It is long term, however, the investigation into the construction of the Bologna-Milan high-speed railway line (2003-2009) and the impact of such a gigantic work on the landscape and territory. Magnificent is the story by John Gossage, “13 ways to miss the train”, a large fresco in thirteen stations, numbered from one to thirteen and composed of a number of photographs equal to the number of the station. Disconcerting, within the concept underlying the work, is the first station, composed of a single photograph that portrays a group of partisans who died during the Resistance. The entire project, carried out by eight photographers, is very interesting and investigates in depth how the relationship changes even between the road axes that existed before the construction of the railway line and those parallel to it.

John Gossage, from the “13 modi per perdere il treno” series, 2003; Paola De Pietri, from the “seccoumidofuoco” series, 2013, ph. courtesy Associazione Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea

The sixth section puts human relationships of proximity back at the center, producing a quality narrative of one of the historical glories of the Emilia-Romagna region: welfare. Through the eyes of five photographers, a collective story is born of some of the contexts in which public presence is more decisive than ever, such as educational activities, those related to childhood, public readings in hospitals, recreational activities and community centers. The seventh and final section is single-authored: Paola De Pietri, in the summer of 2013, conducted some site inspections in the ceramics district, creating a thematic series, entitled seccoumidofuoco which, from the title alone, brings together the web of relationships and flows that exist between raw materials, human knowledge and skills and the physical man as creator. The exhibition is accompanied by the elegant folder of the same name, necessary for orienting oneself in the labyrinth of images and archive documents that occupy the nine sections into which the exhibition is divided.

Info:

VV.AA. On Borders/Sui Confini
08/12/2024 – 23/03/2025
Palazzo dei Musei
Via Lazzaro Spallanzani, 1 – Reggio Emilia
www.musei.re.it

Giovanni Crotti

I am Giovanni Crotti and I was born in June 1968 in Reggio Calabria to be reborn in June 2014 in Piacenza, the city where I live. My income is guaranteed by digital consultancy, and I then spend it largely on art and letterature: I have been and am a content curator and organizer of cultural events for artists, galleries and institutional spaces, as well as a writer of exhibition reviews, creatives of every era and books.