Innholdsfortegnelse for #5 2021 i Artdoc Photography Magazine

The attribution of authorship to photographs has been problematic from the very origin of the medium. In 1844, one of the first commercially published books entirely illustrated with photographs came out under the name of The Pencil of Nature. In this sense, Geoffrey Batchen addresses the lack of an explicit agreement concerning at which point of the process a photograph is made and, considering the complexity of the photographic apparatus, where should be placed the boundary between the creative moment and the mere “labour”? The Pencil of Nature represents a perfect terrain for exploring this dilemma. In fact, despite what suggested in the title, the book came out as a collection of Talbot’s photographs. Furthermore, the argument becomes even more complicated when we consider that one of the twenty-four pictures…

Highlights of Artdoc Exhibition…

“Suture Cut. In pieces on the pavement, brain over the kerb, my blood oozing under the ambulance’s lights. Cut, cut. A mattress on the floor, single bulb, cardboard box of belongings. I have cleared the walls of posters, emptied away most of my things. That was the old me, the one I left on the operating table. Now it’s just the other me here, with this head and this camera. Cut, cut, cut. Nothing to see. Just my own body. Heal, heal, heal. It hurts. It all hurts. My heart, my head, my joints, my extremities burn. I can’t stop moving, trying to find a way to lie down without pain. I stretch, press and pull, but nothing works. Teeth clamped over my lip, back arch clicking and groaning and…

The project, Children of Bombay, was born out of a series of events. According to the story narrated, Mitidieri was in Mumbai for an assignment for a German magazine. While walking through the streets of Mumbai, he noticed that there were street children everywhere. This made him wonder why there still was no big story about them. “This was such an incredible story that had to be told. I knew the film Salaam Bombay, which was successful at that time. I got to meet some of the people who worked with the film, and they gave me insight in the theme of street children. Once back in the UK, I applied for the W. Eugene Smith Grant, and to my surprise, I got the grant in 1991. That was a…

“Black Waves is an expressionistic and metaphorical project that explores the dark depths of grief. It’s based on the true story of a friend of mine, who lost her 19-year-old daughter Eva to suicide on holiday with her boyfriend in France in 2012. The series is a personal visual interpretation of the seven diaries full of grief that I received from the mother of Eva. In this project, I use nature as a poetic tool to narrate a personal story. I visualize the harsh and unknown landscape of mourning. I materialize the nature of sadness and loss. I show her intense desire to reverse the cruel truth by adding some negative prints to the story. The title Black Waves refers to the negative moods of Eva, which led to the…

The book has a total of nine different chapters, of which each treats a part of the Italian workforce situation. The first chapter deals with the Logistic Centres, and in the first photo, we see the Amazon Centre, Castel San Giovanni (Piacenza). In the picture, we see a spacious hall crammed with shelves full of relatively tiny articles. On the side panels, we read the logistic numbers: D423. D422, etc. The introductory text reads: “The Amazon Fulfilment Centre in San Giovanni, near Piacenza, is as big as twelve football pitches.” In other photos of the chapter, the reader gets an impression of how all the boxes are made ready for transport, gliding over long transport belts, dwarfing the spare labourers that work besides the belt. Cynical therefore is the photo…

The title of the book No Buddha in Suburbia becomes apparent when you look at the pictures. You see chaos, the hustle and bustle of crowds of people, electricity cables hanging loose around poles and buildings, rubbish in the gutters, a cacophony of billboards, newly built skyscrapers that dominate the scene as spooky characters. Enlightenment and tranquillity of mind seem out of reach in the streets of the suburbia of Mumbai. “The book’s title was an analogy after the novel The Buddha of Suburbia, written by Hanif Kureishi, about a guy who escaped suburban London. It was a play of words. But the title speaks more about the absence of a guiding thought in the urban planning of Mumbai. There are many layers in the book. The role of politics…