Michele Molinari
January 4, 2021
Gaia Magoni
January 6, 2021

Franco Martelli Rossi

(Padova, 1957)
His interest in photography shows up in 1978 but he begins to work as a professional photographer a few years later, in 1991. Nowadays he works for corporations, companies, professionals and privates. He teaches Art of Photography and Cinematography at Giovanni Sello Arts High School in Udine but he also takes care of courses and laboratories about the history, technique and language of photography. From 1994 to 1996 he worked as the editor in chief of the magazine "Immagine/Cultura" while from 1996 to 2013, on behalf of the town of Tavagnacco, he designed and coordinated a project to research, archive and observe the territory. He also worked on the cataloguing of some founds and took part in many photography exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. His photos have appeared on books, magazines, university books and on other kinds of pubblications specialised in architecture, art, interior design, corporate reportage, territory and creative photography. He had contributed to the creation of many photography books. With the publishing house Campanotto editore he published "LONG VEHICLE" (1991) and in 2020 the collection of short stories "DIARIO".



“I photograph something to know what this thing looks like
when it's photographed"
(Garry Winogrand)

 
project description

Mimesis

 

I watch the world.
To be able to see.
But do I really see?
I don't think so.
Only nature keeps authenticity, but as we know nature loves to hide itself. On the contrary human perceptions are conditiouned by thought. Interpretation always affects human explanation of the surrounding social and cultural reality.
So the glance can't be artless and uncontaminated. Eyes don't analize the surroundings indipendently. Influenced by so many visual signs they look for, and after find, just simulacrums, sometimes immaginary initations. Pheraps this is why Plato distinguishes between the percived object and the idea of it. And he blames mimesis because it imitates things which in truth are copies of ideas. And in this way we keep ourselves three times from the Truth.
But is it so necessary to reveal the true face of reality?
It seems to me that life is something complex: a sort of a tangle in which the apparence and the tangible, the world and the idea overlap themselves. And my gaze, fascinated by the surroundings, often searches thoroughly in the intimate archive of my memories, remembrances and meditations. To delve into the horizon of a new visual space, where real things and surreal things mirror each other.
To let my eye drow into the thought.
And, above all, into a child's dreams.

 
Campone Tramonti Di Sotto, 2016 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Carpeneto, 2016 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Diga De Bellis Fiume Cornappo, 2012 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Ferrovia Magnano In Riviera, 2017 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Klagenfurt, 2011 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Lago Di Barcis Andreis, 2018 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Magliano Sabina, 2017 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Magnano, 2017 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Museo Eremitani Padova, 2019 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Salvarolo, 2018 © Franco Martelli Rossi
San Quirino, 2017 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Sedrano, 2016 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Sedrano, 2016 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Stimigliano, 2018 © Franco Martelli Rossi
Udine, 2017 © Franco Martelli Rossi
 
 
project presentation

This is the concept

" I believe that each photographer establishes a particular and personal relationship with the camera.
I like to remember Mario Giacomelli who told that ho bought his first camera the day before Christmas in 1953 without knowing anything about photography “the day after, Giacomelli remembers, I went to the seaside and I tried to take some pictures: what I wanted to photograph was preceded by a reasoning. I thought il a move the camera and I managed to walk with the wave I will be able to see the sand moving and the wave will be motionless, in other words I changed the order of the things. Obviously I didn’t know what could come out of it, I brought the roll to be developed and after having seeing the strip test I thought that with this tool I could watch inside myself, I wasn’t photographing things in front of me but I was enquiring into my inner reality”.
I really feel in tune with these words from Mario Giacomelli. I also think that photography allows tangible things that are in front of me to communicate with my inner reality. Objects became thoughts and memories playfull illusions.
In this way, a tiny detail of a street floor can became a childish mountain landscape.
And some little party flags transform themselves into rays of light that are formed by the circles of a drawn casually sun. And more, the silhouette of fake birds on plexiglass fly on a background that is at the same time suerreal and true.
And so on.
"

Music: Now 8 Angel (Nathan O. Wills)