Forms of Memory, Como, #1 2019, C-Print
Forms of Memory, Nervesa della Battaglia, #2 2020, C-Print
Forms of Memory, Trento, #3 2020, C-Print
Forms of Memory, Asiago, #4 2020, C-Print
Forms of Memory, Pocol, #5 2020, C-PrintFORMS OF MEMORY (2019 – 2020)
An art commission realized for ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) Ministry of Culture, Italy.
Claudio Gobbi’s photographic research revolves around the theme of the architectural monument in the landscape as a bearer of symbolic meanings, with particular reference to those built in the 1920s and 1930s in the North-East of Italy. A partial and circumscribed geography of memory that reflects on a widespread phenomenon, which has marked the Italian landscape in a peculiar way. What is the relationship between architecture, landscape and memory? What forms have been created to remember and celebrate such a sacrifice, which has so deeply determined the land and borders of the country? What were the cultural references for the architects of that time while designing these huge carriers of the collective consciousness? Architects had a great responsibility in a fundamental period for Italian civil architecture, often contaminated by the rhetoric of the regime and which today represents a constant legacy in our landscape.
Each photograph is the result of a multiplicity of shots taken from the same point of view in different periods of the day. Natural light and artificial light, black and white and color placed side by side, emphasizing the passage of time. A time that is equally the time of the history of Italy and that of the history of photography. The images are therefore a dialogue between past and present that acts on multiple levels and a reflection on the systems of representation of the photographic medium today. (Excerpt from the Exhibition Catalogue)
