BEAUTY OMNE

Beauty is a project created on the occasion of an artist residency in 2018 and 2019 in Castelfranco Veneto by the cultural association OMNE North East Mobile Observatory. Analyzing the different aspects that describe the landscape of the North East of Italy and focusing on the reading of the critical factors attributable to the progressive processes of dispersion and fragmentation, typical of this particular geographical area.

My exploration of the subject of beauty is an attempt to portray linguistic plurality aesthetically.  Fascinated by the transformation of the landscape but also perplexed by it, I constantly wonder what the meaning of my work ought to be. Aware as I am that I have an approach to photography that in technical terms pursues a clear visual language, I decided to accept the challenge launched by the OMNE project to develop my reflection on the theme of beauty and the various ways it is depicted, using my customary operating mode.

My working method involves creating a relationship between the 4”x5” monorail view camera I normally use and a certain idea of how to capture the Italian Veneto landscape. As I see it, they share a vision and an aesthetic result that in a certain sense I would define as archaic.

By definition, archaic means something that belongs to the past, something that precedes us and corresponds to a closed historic, cultural, linguistic or literary process. Starting from this presupposition, I took photographs that were based on the relationship between the medium offered by analog photography and the romantic, archaic landscape of the Italian Veneto, an area where photographers from one or two previous generations had worked, photographers whom I regard as the only true heirs of that way of seeing.

The beauty I tracked down in my project is a challenging aesthetic concept, one that evokes the image of a romantic, anachronistic past of a landscape emphasized by a similarly anachronistic, romantic approach, that of the medium.

Book

Igor Ponti

BEAUTY

Curated by Stefania Rössl and Massimo Sordi

Designed by Damiano Fraccaro / Otium 

Italian / English

2021

374 pages

22,5×31,5×6,5cm

Box with 9 volumes

ISBN 978-88-94895-48-3 

Distributed worldwide by Skinnerboox

Editions

Collector prints are in a total editions of 3 copies + 2 Ap.
Each prints come with a certificate on the back of the print:
title, size, edition number, archive number, print date, technical support, signature.