dialoghidelpresente
Looking at the present, listening to the future.
dialoghidelpresente is a project that stems from the need to tell the story of my everyday life. I don't go out with my camera every day, I don't feel I have to narrate something, nor do I intend to take pictures casually. And here the phone turns out to be one of the most powerful tools for a photographer.
Today, the potential of a mobile phone is endless, but this always depends on how it becomes a medium. Today, an iphone does not have the same photographic quality as a professional camera, but it is a perfect tool for capturing snapshots extremely quickly.
The name dialoghidelpresente was born from the union of two great passions of mine: music and photography. The first reference goes to a Neapolitan composer, a certain Luciano Cilio, discovered a few years ago after a New Year's Eve night of intense drinking. For me it was a revelation, his music, so quiet and mysterious, reached certain vibrations inside my body that I had rarely felt until then. It is difficult to explain when emotions are involved.
In 1977 he released a record work for EMI that collected part of his early chamber works, that work was called 'Dialoghi del presente'.
I could talk about this album for hours, but I will limit myself to saying that within those few minutes is contained the essence of the world. Its experimentation, its ability to translate everything into music, sometimes clear and revealing, sometimes dark and mysterious. All this has such an intimate meaning for me that I get emotional with every listening. This musical work has profoundly influenced my perception of the present, becoming a point of reference for my photographic project.
In dialoghidelpresente, I try to emulate the ability of Cilio's music to capture the essence of the moment, transforming everyday life into a series of visual dialogues. My photographs in this project are an attempt to translate the nuances, emotions and experiences that make up my present into images. Just as Luciano Cilio's 'Dialoghi del presente' have become a timeless musical inspiration, I hope my images can offer a unique insight into the fabric of everyday reality, channelling the ephemeral into a visual dialogue that takes place in the present.
In fact, my main profile pierocorvophoto, for some time, was called dialoghidelpresente, then I realised that that name had nothing to do with that kind of photography and that actually what I wanted to do was not to translate the present, but to present a timeless kind of photography. So dialoghidelpresente became another profile, and here I introduce the second source of inspiration, photographer Stephen Shore.
Stephen Shore is one of the most influential and innovative contemporary photographers. His ability to transform the banality of everyday life into images of extraordinary beauty and meaning is unique. Shore is a master in the art of capturing the beauty of simplicity, transforming urban and rural landscapes into timeless works of art.
His attention to detail and composition is striking, as is his ability to capture light and colour impeccably. His photographs are often characterised by a feeling of calm and tranquillity, even when depicting animated or chaotic scenes. This is due to his mastery of finding the balance between form and content, between objectivity and subjectivity.
But what makes Shore's work truly extraordinary is his pioneering approach to photography. From his earliest work in the 1970s, Shore embraced the use of colour photography, challenging the conventions of the time that saw black and white photography as the only form of artistic expression. He demonstrated that colour could be used just as effectively to tell stories and capture emotions.
His images are often rich in detail, offering an intimate look at everyday life and the people who inhabit it. Through his work, Shore invites us to reflect on the complexity of the world around us and our relationship with it. I believe that Shore's photography can be replicated much more easily with a phone than with a camera, not in the technique, but in the spirit behind it. After all, today Shore only posts photographs taken with a mobile phone on his Instagram profile.
Random pictures from his projects ‘Transparencies’, ‘Uncommon Places’ and ‘American Surfaces’.
Ultimately, Shore is more than just a photographer. He is a visionary who has changed the way we see and understand the world through the art of photography. Shore's photography may seem trivial and simple at first glance, but in reality it is extremely complex. I owe my love for this photographer (and for so many others of his era) to a man named Roberto Morosetti, one of the most extraordinary 'photograph watchers', as he liked to call himself, that I have ever met. I still remember his blog called 'Il vecchio cassetto'. That blog was a source of inspiration for many photographers who, like me, refused to take part in boring - and in my opinion useless - photography courses.
Roberto taught me that perfection in photography is useless. He taught me that photography can be understood as a form of narration and documentation of reality. Every photograph tells a story and, like a tale, can be subject to different interpretations.
Roberto always emphasised the importance of capturing beauty in the diversity and complexity of reality. According to him, true beauty lies in the ability of a photograph to tell something meaningful and emotional. A photograph that manages to capture the essence of a subject, be it a loved one, a landscape or a significant moment, is much more interesting than a simple image that is aesthetically pleasing but lacks depth and meaning.
Now, it must be emphasised that what I usually do is a completely different kind of photography. I like to think that this is just an experiment. Through dialoghidelpresente I intend to represent a photograph without filters, without place and without captions. After all, photography is much more than a mere visual representation, but rather a form of artistic expression that allows us to tell stories, share emotions and explore the world around us.
Piero Corvo - dialoghidelpresente
2024
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