Alberto Petrò
“Non le labili nebbie della memoria né l’asciutta trasparenza, ma il bruciaticcio delle vite bruciate che forma una crosta sulle città, la spugna gonfia di materia vitale che non scorre più, l’ingorgo di passato presente futuro che blocca le esistenze calcificate nell’illusione del movimento.”
Italo Calvino
Con la terza parte si conclude la sezione dedicata alle città. Resti di costruzioni emergono dalle profondità della terra, come pilastri barcollanti di civiltà sepolte che tornano alla luce soltanto come ricordo di un passato al quale l’uomo si lega con curiosità forse proprio perché questi ritrovamenti rappresentano la congiunzione temporale tra passato, presente e futuro. Le fotografie svaniscono lasciando sulla carta soltanto un’immagine sbiadita che sembra confondersi, quasi astraendosi, con lo stesso terreno che la consuma, con la conseguente perdita di punti di riferimento materiali, lasciando come sola traccia la palpabilità del tempo.
Not the ephemeral fogs of memory or the dry transparency, but the burnt crust over burnt cities, the sponge, soaked in still vital material, the obstruction of past present future that blocks the existences calcified in the illusion of movement.
Italo Calvino
Perspectives of abandoned cities, urban apocalyptic sceneries and remains of constructions that emerge from the depth of the Earth represent the visionary temporal conjunction between past, present and future. Everything is exhausted beyond time, whose existence is questioned by these very photographs which are its demonstration. In their metamorphic state, the oxidized silver disfigures the image saturating in the photographic bowels, propagating among the buildings, contributing to the peeling of its cornices and façades. Through this slow but inexorable process, photographs vanish, just like the proof of their existence, leaving on the paper only a faded image as the only trace of time’s tangibility. I treated photographs like tridimensional surfaces. I mistreated them, consumed with chemical expedients. I have buried some, let them dry and unearthed them. I wanted to transfer my invisible perception on paper and look at it.
The section dedicated to cities ends with the third part. Remains of buildings emerge from the depths of the earth, like staggering pillars of buried civilizations that come back to light only as a reminder of a past to which man binds himself with curiosity, perhaps precisely because these findings represent the temporal conjunction between past, present and future. The photographs vanish, leaving on the paper only a faded image that seems to merge, almost abstracting itself, with the very ground that consumes it, with the consequent loss of material points of reference, leaving the palpability of time as its only trace.
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