2010-11-05

Alpine Pastorals #7 -- Perfect setups. Rest and Picnic at 6076 feet

The pictures in this and some forthcoming posts where taken last year (2009). The place in object is of great interest for my analytic landscape photography for several reason. To begin with it is a place that is part of my former Italian youth (starting from the age of six). In all this time, 42 years (yes I know! that is also the "answer" in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), I've seen it change in dramatical ways, from a semi abandoned place to the theatre of one of the most popular stages in the road bicycle race named "Giro D'Italia". But the place also carries memories from the last two world wars with trenches still visible and ad memoriam plaques. Recently the place received the attentions of a "landscape architect" willing to celebrate the Giro's heroic gestures and to prepare it as a receptacle of the ongoing "naturalistic tourism" demand. The "fortunate" circumstance is that most of the public coming here also happens to have a high density of "Lega Nord" voters, an Italian party that in the last decade worked hard to establish an identity connected with "memoires" and mythologies from the pre Roman past in a truly post modern fashion.

Le immagini di questo e in alcuni post a venire sono state scattate l'anno scorso (2009). Il luogo in oggetto è di grande interesse per la mia fotografia analitica di paesaggio per molte ragioni. Per cominciare questo luogo è fa parte della mia prima infanzia Italiana (a partire da sei anni). I tutto questo tempo, 42 anni (si lo so questa è anche la "risposta" nella "guida galattica per autostoppisti"), l'ho vista cambiare in modo drammatico, da un luogo semi abbandonato a teatro di una delle tappe del "Giro D'Italia". Il luogo, però, porta anche il ricordo delle due guerre mondiali con trincee e lapidi a memoria. Recentemente ha ricevuto le attenzioni di un "architetto paesaggista" desideroso di celebrare le gesta eroiche del giro e di preparare il luogo per rispondere alla domanda di "turismo naturalistico". La circostanza "fortunata" è che la gran parte del pubblico che frequenta l'area risulta avere una alta densità di votanti della "Lega Nord", che nell'ultima decade si è data molto da fare a costruire una identità connessa con memorie e mitologie del passato pre Romano con uno stile squisitamente post moderno.

5 comments:

Kent Wiley said...

Nicely self contained, Mauro. You explained all the unexplained elements in one photo w/ a subsequent photo.

My real question about photography - and perhaps another reason I'm drawn to the literary and sculptural capabilities of motion pictures - is how to get all of your text into the photos. How do you go about getting the five(!) associations of the place you mention in your post INTO the photograph. This is the frustration w/ the surface reality of photography.

Mauro Thon Giudici said...

Kent,
visual thinking is not strictly related with the spoken (or written) language.
Its not only a matter of transliteration.
That's why I generally avoid to associate text with the image. But in this case and every now and then I need to be index on google on upon the picture subjects, in such a case words help a lot ...

Kent Wiley said...

"visual thinking is not strictly related with the spoken (or written) language."

Most certainly. A great example of images accruing density w/o any words whatsoever can be found in a film I watched recently, Koyaanisqatsi.

Mauro Thon Giudici said...

Kent sorry for the late in publishing your comment.

I've seen the "qatsi"s*, the first on a cinema screen in 83/84 can't remember exactly.

The thing that fascinated me was the clever reuse either from commercials or other archives.

On the aesthetic side I think that the entire series, with a progressive shift on the side, is a bit to much onto "the glorious side of things".

Phil Glass is quite interesting even if I prefer his "Einstein on the Beach" that was
somewhat less adapted. However I have a great debt with his expression of minimalism.

(* sorry that's an Italian joke. It sounds more or less as "cazzi" a not that much polite expression in vulgar Italian)

Kent Wiley said...

"On the aesthetic side I think that the entire series, with a progressive shift on the side, is a bit to much onto "the glorious side of things"."

I'm still working my way through the series, so can't say for sure whether I agree w/ this. But I don't think that's necessarily the intent in the first film. Godfrey Reggio has said they are about technology as a world we live in, almost suspended above the natural world, but also as an experience of art.