Portraits in a suitcase in Rome

The open bag that reveals its contents of memories is itself an object that exists in its physical and metaphorical form, the appropriate “companion” to accompany the journey, through space and time that can only be partially identified. So is the shoe box or the cookie tin, the old cardboard with string, the wooden box that in another life held precious bottles of wine. Objects that set aside their original function to house others: photographs, papers, letters, sacred cards. Photographed by Mario Crisci (Chiavari, 1942) is an open bag whose contents are compressed, crystallized, precipitated memories. The Memory Archive is part of a series of black and white photographs taken in 1979 by the extraordinary protagonist of Barbarano Romano’s (Viterbo) photographic experiments.

In the “old” bedroom with a traditional woolen bedspread between the two wrought-iron headboards (a crocheted tablecloth is placed there, too), it was photographs that sparked the imagination, images of humans who have embraced the unknown for a long time now. Pictures that reveal themselves in their spirited subversiveness to a world that today seems far away. In all his body, not only as a recording of a “real” image entrusted to memory, the imaging is present but suspended. Among the nearly 400 antique portraits (silver gelatin prints) on display in the personal gallery Mario Kreshi. exorcism of time, Curated by Marco Scuttini with Simona Antonacci at Galleria 5 of MAXXI in Rome (until October 1), the main core is dedicated to Lucania, where the photographer arrived in 1966 and stayed until the 1980s to collaborate on the master plan of the city, with various functions including Crispy interiors, Tricarico, Matera (1967), Portraits of the Royal Basilicata (1972), Matera photos and documents (1975), Measurements, Matera (1975-80). Is its nature the ethnographic document, or, on the contrary, the nature of the theoretical object? In this sense, is it a sign of a post-imaging tension, of a self-reflective realization? That is, they do not limit themselves to showing an image, but do they even display the representation that governs it? Besides, what are these photos from the early ’70s question? Is their goal to endorse or certify something, or, conversely, to question it? Marco Scuttini asks in the pages of the catalog published by Contrasto. The tension between the solemnity of the daily ritual and the fleeting moment, the emergence and the spontaneity translates into this exercise to rewrite the present that Mario Crischi observes without prejudice. A time fragment in transit lingers on the family archives, guardians of the little stories that flow into the great history.

This concept is also central to the show Peggy Clipper. every day in life (Photography 1959-1992), curated by Ariana Catania and Lorenzo Ballini and organized in collaboration with Les Photography de Peggy Kleiber Association at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere (until September 29).
Here the absolute protagonist is neither the subject of the photographs nor the author of the footage but the archive itself. A private archive of about 15,000 photographs, taken between the end of the 1950s and the 1990s by an anonymous amateur photographer (no relation to Vivian Maier’s “case”), rediscovered by the family after her death inside two suitcases. Peggy Kleber (Mouttier, canton Bern, Switzerland 1940-2015) had developed a passion for the language of photography when she attended the Hamburger Fotoschule in Hamburg in 1961. With his inseparable Leica M3 around his neck, he traveled extensively in Europe, returning frequently to Italy.
The exhibition presents two important chapters of his work – his family and Italy – through letters, diaries, negatives, maps and Super 8 films.

She made the book herself Nof Street 44, History of Family Life 1963-1983 who gave it to his family. “The films, almost all in black and white, are so often ‘drawn’, the curators write, that some images come to us as tattered fragments of a rediscovered time.” Especially in photographs taken in Italy (where he returns punctually in the 1960s to visit the capital, Paestum, Capo d’Orlando, in Umbria and other places outside the traditional routes of the Grand Tour), Kléber – an attentive and respectful flanor – does not aspire to the sweet visions that a traveler loves The foreigner so much, instead he lets himself be guided by the gaze of Danilo Dolce, who has the opportunity to know and repeat, telling the inhabited places of the suburbs and the historical center of Rome through the gestures of the people. Rome different from that photographed by another amateur, the noble Francesco Chigi Albani della Rovere (1881-1953), author of a box of more than six thousand units (mainly negatives on glass and film) donated by the family in 1970 Department of Photography, today ICCD – Institute Central Indexing and Documentation.

Artist, teacher, curator and writer Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, ​​1955), invited by the Institute for dialogue with its historical collections, chose to intervene in this box. Thanks to the Public Notice PAC2021 – Contemporary Art Plan promoted by the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition was created Joan Fontcuberta. dust culture (until September 29) – The title is a quote from the works of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp Elevation of poussière (1920) – edited by Francesca Fabiani, with production by the artist’s book (Danilo Montanari Editore) and acquisition of his work in the ICCDC’s Contemporary Photography Collection. The Catalan artist’s interest was directed more than a specific subject matter or the aesthetic element of the panels by the degree of their deterioration, attacked by mold, fungus and other harmful agents.
In 12 lightboxes created for the exhibition by scanning and intervening on the original paintings, we witness the “revenge” of damage, defect and error but also the “physical torment of photography”. Photography is a material-related memory device. – says Fontcuberta himself – «Material degradation generates a paradoxical image of ‘amnesiac’, with amnesia».