literature

History teaches that within whichever regime there have always been some middleground figure who would pull the strings of the frontline characters; be they disguised as functionaries, comrades, relatives or lovers. In the realm of visuality, or else within the Scopic Regime of contemporary Western culture, the dominance of the Fine Arts has been increasingly reconfigured from within by the upcoming influence of the photographic crafts, up to the point (roughly the second postwar years) when the dominance started to change hands and be somewhat equally shared between the plastic arts (by then unredeemably de-defined) and the photographic images (which would always play on two decks: that of documentation and that of creation).
Now, I must admit photography is no middleground figure at all, but certainly it plays a very ambiguous role in our visual regimes. Vilém Flusser and several other theoreticians have frequently reiterated their remarks on how photography would be the perfect means to detect how visuality actually works. Centuries of rethoric statements, long ages of propaganda, entire eras when seeing used to be believing, would dissolve in the unbearable crystal clarity of Reason, if only – and only if – we paid closer attention to the hidden agenda of visuality. A merging of psycological, communicational and behavioural mechanisms that photography's multiple identities easily unveil. Photography would then become not quite a synonym of philosophy – for its typical lack of unilinear logical argumentation – yet another way of pursuing some of the same goals of philosophy. Wasn't Ludwig Wittgenstein taking both departing routes of the crossroad when he wrote: "don't think but look"? He was making up a non-definitory method for thinking and he was also grounding it on the apprehension of some deep sense from the perspicuous act of seeing, and seeing-as: which is always the case.
I may be eliciting too much patience and attention from my reader on my way to Marco Campanini's photographic works. Illustrations surely have outdone my argument and the reader must have willingly turned into an onlooker in order to break free from this overdetermined and understimulating verbosity. My intention, in the first place, was to play the same game Marco's pictures do play; but I'm afraid I lost control. In any case, Campanini's photographs deceptively deal with such subjects as the iconic tradition of representation, maps, charts, illustrations. Among his series we would find close-up pictures of historical paintings, ancient atlases or architectural drawings. All sorts of images are taken by Marco in their third generation: not as original sources, not as their immediate photographic indexical icons, but as the printed re-mediation of such images. He takes them as such and that's where photography performs its philosophical trick. Campanini softly reframes, tilts, darkens and selectively displaces the focus so as to make all these images back into actual landscapes, buildings, moments in time, glances and gestures. The immediate sensation I got once confronted with a picture of a reproduction of a river, from an old beautifully handpainted atlas, was to stand with my feet deep in the cold waters. The stream was blurred at both edges of the frame by a strongly selective focus, yet nevertheless so sharp in my perception at the center, and I could clearly perceive either banks where I could safely go ashore. At the very same time I was enjoying the careful and coherent framing of the artpiece: glued on a thin board floating within a matte white minimal frame. A sense of levitation was naturally implied both in the imagemaking process, and in its framing; both in the theoretical and in the perceptual suspension provided by the work.
As far as I can tell, Marco is a very soft spoken person, attentive and reflexive. Together with the tools of his craft comes his wit: photography, philosophy, communication, art history, photographic heritage; these are the ingredients he combines, the connections he shortcircuits, in order to achieve a clearer understanding of our historical and critical position in this overwhelming scenario of the early 21st century. His photographs – for that is his final output – always radiate a mixed feeling of exactitude (due to the careful selective focussing) and uncertainty (due to the tilting, lighting and framing of the subjects). Campanini's works, though, also radiate different wavelenghts: the long persistent waves typical of old images, incunabula, classics, historical memories or of "that has been" (please, pick your favourite category) on the one hand, and, on the other, the short powerful waves propelled by contemporary art, by the conceptual work of an author who is able to sign a piece only when he is certain of which will be its place within his own body of work, and on the general creative landscape of his times. In Campanini's photographs pulsing life is drawn from the image of an image of a picture, as DNA would be extracted from a dinosaur's bone and used to recreate an extinct animal. In Campanini's view mass-media (including both books and the web) are the paradoxical second nature of photography no less than fiction would be the paradoxical second nature of science.
I might also be expected to chart Marco's position in the network of strong influences he may have resented. I could recall how intensely did Paolo Monti picture together the Italian landscape and its billboards, bringing back in the 50s and 60s the same spirit of Walker Evans; I should naturally add that Evans and Monti (and Friedlander, but I'm repeting myself) were among the main influences for Luigi Ghirri who would first start looking at all the things that had already been seen, so as to see them anew. It was Ghirri the one to produce the first set of pictures of an atlas – in fact called Atlante (Atlas) – where ordinary maps and charts, depicted and partially illustrated were taken in close-up and turned into impossible landscapes. But I believe this customary historical exercise might make no more sense than praising the vineyard when sipping a particularly fine wine we owe to a lucky combination of variable elements.
Photographs taken philosophically don't always look the same. It is therefore no less deeply meaningful that Marco Campanini has now finally quit taking photographs in order to make a selection of files of contemporary artworks downloaded from the web. No wonder how his perspicuous looking at images could turn to such basic materials as the found files scattered around the public domain. Selection replaces framing, electronic management replaces photochemical treatment; and, while the new series apparently diverge from the previous ones – once again, as always, when talent is at work – still the selfsame rationale, a one and only unerring obsession, firmly stands behind all of the different series, and all of the different pictures within each series. Similarities with other authors won't bother, for only a shallow glance would mistake one thing for its opposite. And everytime I receive some low-resolution files from his studio I am almost sure that, whatever source he may be quoting – and questioning – every image of an image of a picture he may produce, will always be the newest of images.

Augusto Pieroni