Striking photographs taken by Italian
writer Roberto Cotroneo of people admiring artworks in museums
are on show at Rome's Modern Art Gallery (GNAM) until June 4.
The show, entitled 'Genius Loci, In the Theatre of Art',
represents Cotroneo's return to photography after 30 years as
one of Italy's top writers.
Speaking at the vernissage, Culture Minister Dario
Franceschini said the show was "very original with beautiful
photos, and a beautiful idea behind it", that of capturing the
various emotions felt by an observer of art.
Franceschini revealed that he, too, had sometimes done the
same thing, that is photograph people in front of works instead
of the works themselves.
"People think that you are photographing a work and instead
the subject is them.
"You have the feeling you are accomplishing what photography
sets out to do, that is to steal moments and make them eternal".
Franceschini said Cotroneo's show "restores a living museum,
made of works, but also of the people visiting it".
Famous Italian photographer Ferdinando Scianna said he was
"intrigued and amused" by the latest work of Cotroneo, with whom
he said he was "for some time an accomplice in photography and
writing."
The photographs capture the fleeting emotions and gestures of
people admiring artworks and taking selfies in front of them, as
well as looking at one another, with Cotroneo in turn observing
their posture, their moments of reflection, offering, in
Scianna's opinion, countless facets and sociological
implications on the relationship with art today.
Explaining his decision to return to photography, Cotroneo
said "these day you can no longer do one thing only, that is too
restricting".
"Ever since I picked up the camera again, this time a digital
one, I asked myself what I should shoot, and so I chose museums,
which are my passion".
In the beginning the subjects were the artworks and
architecture, but then the writer's attention shifted to the
human animals populating the galleries.
"I started studying people, how they moved, how they looked
at things, where they stood," he said.
Cotroneo's lens captures people looking at Edward Hopper or
Piero della Francesca, a photo by David Lachapelle, a work by
Alberto Burri or Mimmo Paladino.
Many visitors, if not almost all, photograph what they are
seeing while others absent themselves, find distractions, look
at their smartphones and await news from their private world in
the midst of the artistic environment.
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