All of my work, and Ka more emphatically and with a more structured approach than in the past, draws its greatest inspiration from ancient cosmogonies, from their mysterious revelatory power and from their being at once memory and prediction.
The title itself is a precise reference to the book of the same name by Roberto Calasso, a work very difficult to define, which might perhaps be described as an unprecedented, disarming journey through fragments of Vedic mythology.
Myth, often handed down to new generations as a fascinating yet crude tale of primitive peoples, should instead be rediscovered and reread as history’s deepest and most vital reservoir. It is its cornerstone.
Our civilization, in its current state, is incapable of producing myth. To me, this is the painful symptom of a disorder, as well as the consequence of an inability to see oneself as part of an infinite flow; ultimately, it is proof of a detachment from one’s roots that empties any outlook on the future of meaning.
Recovering a mythical vision is the purpose of my path. Each individual work, far from presenting defined characters or narrating ancient stories, seeks instead to recall deep impulses, timeless states. To resist analysis as the sole tool for reading reality. To question existence’s deepest, and therefore irreducible, mysteries.
Song of Empty Hands is a series of 12 images made in March/April 2020 during the lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a work different from previous ones, just as the state of mind in which it was made is different. The theme is contact — not only its absence, as one might logically assume, but above all the various nuances that remain of touching. Grazing, timidly brushing with the tip of a single finger, touching without recognizing, questioning the marks things leave upon us; hands folded, demented, childlike. And then the forced rest, the waiting equal to the striking of the hour, the dismay at feeling one’s own perceptions change within a short time, the insignificance of every unshared action. The absence of others’ skin; the skin of hands, they say, is like a trap. The joke that everyone carries their own trap with them. The nostalgia for grasping something without thought, and the mockery of the wind that instead paws at everything, entering joyfully through the window.
In mineralogy, pseudomorphism occurs when one mineral transforms into another while retaining its original chemical composition unchanged. In the same way, the works making up the Pseudomorphika project have the “composition of photography” without being photography; they possess its technology but not its language, and the human figures they portray exist, but differently from how they appear.
At the root of the research leading to these results are certain questions that, years ago, imposed themselves with urgency in my work as a photographer: to what extent can a phenomenon be described by photographing it? To what extent is analysis useful? Can one truly be objective? What is missing in an image identical to the portion of reality it depicts? Although artists such as Cartier-Bresson and Salgado had amply shown me the possibility of poetic photography even within the limited objectivity of the technological medium, I suddenly sensed the danger of the excessively analytical gaze on reality that photography was, and still is, helping to normalize. A gaze that endlessly multiplies a surface-level datum but ceases to probe deeply, that insists on the individual within society while neglecting the human being, severing all ties with any artistic or philosophical tradition. Considering instead that the archetypal questions about existence, the mystery of being alive and of dying, and the substantial ambiguity of every phenomenon remain vital, I decided to try to bend the photographic medium to these concerns. On a technical level, two operations therefore became necessary: expanding my skills to include digital manipulation and painting techniques; and codifying a language that would not risk being confused with illustration or the fantasy genre. This is not about imagining other realities while disregarding the practical problems of the world, which must be addressed in altogether different ways and contexts, but about recovering a conscious gaze on that confrontation with the multiform and the unknowable from which existence has always originated. A gaze that today seems entirely absorbed by the minute analysis of current events and that, in my view, lies at the root of the countless distortions of the society we have created.
At present, this research path is chiefly represented by two series of works: Rivoluzionario passo zero, completed in 2018 and exhibited several times, and Ka, an unpublished series begun in 2019 and still in progress. Pseudomorphika draws from these two distinct moments its key developments, above all in relation to the treatment of the body and the face, which are photographed and then reconstructed “pseudomorphically” according to increasingly structured rules, with the precise intent of giving form to figures possessing the fundamental traits of ambiguity, of uncertain and controlled verisimilitude, indispensable for expressing those original impulses of human action that constitute the thematic core of the entire body of work.
/ Cover: Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
By Claudia Andreotta
Giusi Lorelli’s approach to art inevitably arises from a doubt: the undeniable attractive power of her works erupts with the inevitable question, “Painting? Photography?” Thus the “zero step” toward the vortex of the indeterminate is accomplished, in a cosmos that fuses baroque, violent suggestions, dense with emotional tensions, transfigured into a rarefied yet lucid poetry. This is not, however, a journey toward other worlds, but a total immersion in the primal agonistic condition of humankind: the confrontation with the multiform, terrifying “challenger” in the eternal struggle toward self-awareness. The highly controlled use of technical and linguistic means, free of emphasis or rhetoric, leads along a path toward the unknowable: not an aimless wandering, but a genuine route set in the exact direction of a faint glimmer, a “preview” of the true self beyond the darkness. A persistent inquiry into the archetypal questions inherent in humanity, which never finds an answer either in the Enlightenment illusion of sovereign rationality or in the numbing evasion of mystical surrender. The questions raised, also prompted by intimately personal experiences, are stripped of every individual element to be transposed into universality, into an undeferrable urgency to question oneself. Rivoluzionario passo zero, an emblematic title encapsulating the sense and meaning of the artist’s most recent works (2014-2018), faced with the collapse of certainties, chooses to struggle with the unknown, aware of wanting to live a destabilizing experience in search of the self, yet unable to foresee the shape of the danger to which she chooses to expose herself.
Giusi Lorelli portrays the suspended moment, the “zero step” preceding the start of the battle, making palpable the emotional vibration of a situation whose victorious outcome is not a given. The viewer, too, must pause, setting aside all prior knowledge: the very language of these works is in fact “revolutionary,” often carrying meanings opposite to classical iconography. And if the initial doubt resolves in favor of photography, an unresolved feeling remains at the interpretive level: the recovery of the personal dimension of existence is an unrepeatable act, occurring in a different way for every individual. The artist points to the only viable itinerary but cannot provide directions: certain the route, certain the destination, (un)certain the nature of the journey into the soul.
/ Cover: Blanca Guerra e Axel Jodorowski in Santa Sangre, by Alejandro Jodorowski
My work arises from the constant collision with the mystery of existence, from the need to contribute to untangling a gigantic knot, from the impulse Werner Herzog called the conquest of the useless, from the alchemists’ ambula ab intra.
The works belonging to it never settle on matters of current events, do not dissect facts; rather, they synthesize as much as possible, attempting to map a path that lies beneath the surface of events and constitutes their secret current. They are like atoms which, lined up and viewed from a certain distance, form a body. I have the reasonable suspicion that whatever appears clear under examination bears no resemblance to truth, but is instead a sum of measurements, useful in very specific circumstances and ultimately of little interest. For these reasons, the following series of images does not follow the criteria of the project, and each work arises from a different spark, tracing on its own a stretch of the same path.
The study, the experience, and the emotional storm that results from it are not the subject of the work but its backstory, which remains private and lived apart; what I strive to offer instead is the fruit of this phase, carefully stripped of anything pertaining to me alone and indeed pushed as far as possible from what sets me apart as an individual. Only in this way, I believe, can that fruit contain a seed precious to me and to my fellow human beings, for whom deep sharing — not superficial identification — is an indispensable aim.
/ Cover: Il ritratto e lo specchio, by Giusi Lorelli, Art&Art, n°62, feb-mar 2016
Article from the column La foto sulla schiena, Art&Art, no. 63, April-May 2016
A photographer can naturally be inclined toward only one of two possible attitudes: the fast one or the slow one. The fast attitude places the photographer before things as though facing fireworks. Reality reveals itself to him in a flash, in the form of an explosion, and a moment later a myriad of fragments strike him, waiting to be captured, like sparks coming from every direction. The hunt for sparks is spasmodic and feverish, often because the seconds are numbered, other times because his attention is stretched along infinite directions. In this spatio-temporal pressure lies the pleasure of the fast attitude, which is what unites the street photographer, the documentarian, the photojournalist, and finally the paparazzo. What differentiates them is the breadth of their field of interest. The slow photographer, by contrast, aims at the astronomical magnification of a single aspect. For him, the hunt begins long before the shutter is pressed. Days, months, even years spent hunting a detail that, once captured, must be reviewed under certain conditions, carefully sifted, and finally distilled into a single photograph. In this distillation lies the pleasure of the slow attitude, which belongs to the landscape photographer, whether of nature or of the city, as well as, to a certain extent, to the photographer of large-scale sets (in the style of LaChapelle, so to speak). What sets the latter apart from the others is that, for him, the detail is recreated on a set that becomes a laboratory governed by even stricter rules, in a place and time set apart.
It is wasted time to try to establish which of the two paths is more fascinating, and it should be added that incursions of fast photographers into slow territory, and vice versa, are frequent. Consider, for instance, the many enchanting landscapes of the extremely fast McCurry, or the early documentary narratives of the extremely slow, young Kubrick. But when applied to Salgado’s work, the very idea of incursion seems unfitting, because the verticality of his commitment as artist and witness to the world, the discipline and ardor with which he has trained himself both in speed and in slowness, make him a master of both approaches.
Sebastião Salgado, Brazilian, born in 1944, is a photographer with particularly refined senses — all six of them — which have built, along his path, a life worthy of a novel. Initially heading toward a career as an economist, with a degree from São Paulo and a job already underway in Europe, he encountered photography and swiftly, without hesitation, transformed himself into a photojournalist. The political-economic training he possessed naturally came to serve his photographic inquiry, and this shift in perspective is the first clue to a personality little inclined to settle along the routes suggested by aptitude tests. Another clue: in 1994, after roughly fifteen years of collaboration, he left the Magnum Agency. Working for Magnum meant, then far more than today, being in Olympus. Leaving it, however imperfect it may actually be, requires considerable clarity of intent. When in 2003, after a period of deep crisis, of “sickness of the soul” as he himself called it, he decided to devote himself to a project of an entirely different nature from photojournalism — the “visual ode to the beauty and fragility of the Earth” that would become Genesis — more than a few doubts arose among his collaborators. “What, after everything you’ve done, you’re turning to landscape?” someone must have said, wrinkling their nose. Indeed, the prejudice still lingers today that landscape photography is somewhat of a genre for everyone, with little room for innovation, not very demanding, and above all too slow for the temperament and career of a photojournalist.
But, as was to be expected from the work of a man who is not outside the mold but, more precisely, devoid of one altogether, Genesis offered itself to the world with the force of a revealed secret. It doesn’t take long to realize that Salgado’s landscapes stand elsewhere compared to those of any other author; the difference lies not only in technique, nor only in the monumental scale of the effort, but in both together, accompanied by a disposition of spirit that does not merely observe but, further still, embraces, welcomes, and loves to the point of merging with everything before it. What Genesis’s images arouse is a feeling that precedes the coding of emotions, something more ancient than the idea of perfection or of panic. It is the silence of a mind in contemplation. Certainly an unprepared observer, faced with the image of a penguin diving from an iceberg into the ocean, might not resist the impulse to exclaim “how poetic!”, “how tender that penguin is!” — just as happens when admiring other, different but equally breathtaking photographs. But in this case, immediately afterward, they would be forced to recognize the utter inadequacy of their own emotion before the power of a new way of seeing. The absence of preconception and prejudice is total, just as there is no trace of any cultural coding regarding beauty. In the portraits, this absence of reference becomes downright rough and illegible to the Western observer. Those faces, through which feelings we have never given a name to shine through, often make identification impossible and leave one feeling uncomfortable, inadequate, as though seated on a scorching chair.
Genesis is testimony to a way of dwelling on Earth that is as new as it is ancient, of looking at it without falling into the rusty man-nature dialectic that, depending on the moods of the times, sees one or the other triumph. In Salgado, everything simply is. In stillness. Even the man, the woman, the child. A timeless stillness that recalls, if possible, that of a bow drawn taut the instant before the arrow is loosed, and certainly not that of cloth folded away in a drawer.
Every artist’s work is the result of their journey into certain deep and marshy places of existence, but some men manage to descend so far into pain that when, in rebound, they find themselves visiting the high places, nothing stands in the way of their joy.
/ Cover: Poster for the photography course The Photo on Your Back, held in Genoa from 2013 to 2016
There are no creative acts that are not, at the same time, also political.
Anyone who approaches a means of expression should not forget that in the very act of approaching it, they express the intent to act creatively. And however much we are told otherwise from various quarters (and the results are there to see), acting creatively is not a solipsistic-onanistic exercise, one that concerns only oneself and whose fruit must then be imposed on others, demanding their attention as though it were a right. Nor is it an act aimed at communicating this or that concept, unless one later decides to make it so; communication operates on a very different and narrower plane than the one we are attempting to approach here, and it is the province of advertisers, journalists, politicians, popularizers of every kind, and postmen.
To act creatively means, above all, to grant oneself the possibility of being free.
Those who at this point wipe away a tear of emotion, feeling perfectly at home with the matter, should convince themselves that we are not reciting a slogan, but speaking of something damnably difficult that, I would almost venture, comes close to the meaning of an entire life. If everyone who dreams of acting freely in photography stopped seriously, even for a moment, to reflect on what this entails, they would understand that the first step would be to stop shooting, to stop publishing, to stop compulsively reproducing photos already seen, comfortable photos, fashionable colors, winning clichés, and news-broadcast emotions; in short, they should stop striving so ardently and devotedly to consolidate fashion and everything it dramatically implies.
Perhaps it would be worth becoming shy again.
Acting creatively, in photography as in any other expressive field, means being honest to the bone, seeking the impossible, adoring the useless, being constantly “hungry.” In photography more than in other fields, and in these recent years more than before, it means learning to select, to withhold, to discard. The technological drift that, in truth, is suffocating culture as a whole with that unbearable myth of a thousand and one possibilities within reach, has stunned everyone to the point that no one seems to have the nerve anymore to take a stance and set themselves a limit, as if narrowing one’s field of action were an open admission of ineptitude. The truth is quite different. The truth is that we do not know what to do with the thousand and one possibilities technology offers us, for as long as we do not know what it means to grant ourselves the possibility of being free.
If we knew, with sufficient clarity, what our great question is, we would know how to make use of the means at our disposal with the skill needed, at the very least, not to be overwhelmed by them. We would know, for instance, that mourning a craft-based past by lending it almost mythical contours is not enough to free us from the problem, and indeed makes us obtuse; we would know when black-and-white barely saves one of our images from the wastebasket and when, instead, it is the very “skin” of our photograph; we would know that ten shots are not ten photographs; in short, we would know that the crux of the problem is always the same, and it is that incommunicable something that lies not in the tool but in the awareness of the one who uses it.
And how does one do all this? How does one come to know one’s own great question and act creatively? I have already stated what I believe is the first, unavoidable step: to stop acting if one does not know the question. Restraining oneself when creativity does not stem from a premise of absolute honesty is the only weapon against the catastrophic consequence that our compulsive doing has on others, namely boredom or, worse still, habituation. Because I want to repeat it: no creative act is without consequences for our fellow human beings, and so, if it is not able to kindle their vitality — which would be desirable — it may well be capable of doing the opposite.
Then the second step: look at the works of others, know as many of them as possible, understand where they come from, when they were born, in what context and what problem they address. One must let oneself be inspired by the insights and limitations of those who came before us; one must love those who gave themselves unconditionally and despise those who betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; one must allow works to provoke us until we catch fire, until all that remains of us is pleasure and boundless passion. One must then go deeper and understand which details, in the works we have loved, disturbed our balance so profoundly as to give us new momentum, and why they did so, and finally carry them away with us until an indeterminate number of stolen details builds our own great question.
I don’t deny feeling a little embarrassed to say that one must study, but a worrying host of visual artists who don’t look, writers who don’t read, and critics who don’t criticize makes me think it is not entirely superfluous. Perhaps we tend to confuse education with culture. And indeed it would be more accurate on my part to say that one must let oneself become passionate (and not only about oneself), which has much more to do with cultivating a culture than with acquiring an education. Certainly, stopping to unmask, one by one, the deceptions that countless commercial clichés foist on us, together with propaganda of every kind, proves indispensable. Taking this path, only apparently static, can make our images sit on our back like an invincible desire, a need for fulfillment that goes beyond any ordinary sense of measure and self-perception, rather than like a backpack loaded with stones. Or worse, like those proverbial roof tiles that fall on you when you least expect it.
These are, in truth, the opening moves of the research. From these first works gathered under the name Studies 2012, an inquiry officially begins, with all its contradictions and its fears.
