10 leporello pages, 9 photographs
20×25 cm
limited Edition of 20
hahnemühle fine art paper
acquista il libro luce attesa soli neri
Con un saggio di Éric de Chassey
“…Qui Marco Delogu fa a meno di questa famosa luce romana, basando le sue due serie di fotografie sulla (…) sua completa assenza. In questo modo, coglie una più sottostante, non scontata e non meno importante luce, emblematica di Roma. La luce del tempo stesso: Roma è la città in cui, più che in qualsiasi altra parte del mondo, la storia si fa sentire in tutta la sua diversità e la sua durata, senza chiudersi in un periodo a scapito degli altri, sia melanconica che distruttiva, ma anche molto suggestiva. Senza descrivere tutto questo, che avrebbe prodotto immagini didascaliche, lo rende invece incredibilmente visibile, o addirittura palpabile, una palpabilità che può nascere solo da una lunga familiarità, nel tremito dei contorni e dei colori (nei paesaggi notturni), nella quasi totale assenza di motivi (di segni sotto un sole nero). Crea immagini che passano sopra questa linea molto sottile, perché sono estremamente concrete e specifiche, ma appaiono anche sul punto di diventare o tornare indistinte.
“Marco Delogu is a very experienced photographer. His work usually makes use of sophisticated skills, whether they go through a complex technical apparatus or not. During the summer of 2014, he decided to get back to primitive states of photography. ‘Getting back’ is an inappropriate phrase, as I doubt that he had ever used such means before, especially not when he started. What this ‘turning back’ entails is that Delogu has traveled, artistically, to this point when photography was born, but with all the history of the medium having taken place in the meantime, all his personal history, both as a photographer and as a professional connoisseur of the art of photography, having happened before this starting from scratch, again.
… Delogu here produces images that seem to verge on artificiality when they are actually faithful to what has been in front of his camera: a portion of the sky delimitated on one side by large neon or metal signs, themselves burnt by years of being exposed to the sun of this southern city which is Rome, or elements of familiar landscapes blurred and colored by the tenuous and unstable nighttime lights. It is fitting that Rome, of any places, should be their subject matter. For this city is the place par excellence where the primitivistic impulse has always been inextricably linked with a popular crudeness that doesn’t distinguish between high and low, eternal and disposable, general and particular – and here, famous places mingle with less specific locations, both being equalized in a sort of generic blandness that displaces specificity and beauty to the images themselves, even if the viewer can recognize the gardens of Villa Medici or of the Palatine hill, the sign of a bar or a hotel commonly linked with important events (such as Pasolini’s death). It could seem paradoxical as well, because Rome has been praised for centuries for the quality of its light – daylight that is, ever changing (every hour, every season), always beautiful and rich. And here Delogu does without this famous Roman light altogether, basing his two series on its utter absence. ..“
Éric de Chassey
