The other sicilians. 8 photographers + 1 engineer
Another group of sicilian photographers, moreover in Palazzolo Acreide, a place (amazing!) but located 1500 km from Milan, 900 from Rome, but also 250 from Palermo. Was it needed? I think so. Because there are always exhibitions dedicated to Sicilian photographers, at all times in all parts of the Peninsula, often even abroad. The names proposed, however, are always the same often great masters to whom absolutely no responsibility for the wrongdoing should be attributed: if anything, the responsibility lies with those who manage (lazily?) Public institutions and galleries doing little or no research.
Because instead there are also other sicilians who deserve to be known outside the sphere of the province in which they operate: for this reason San Sebastiano Contemporary opens his speech on photography especially from this exhibition. And it does so by mixing different generations and paths, even absolute debuts.
I consider it an opportunity, however: both for one and the other.
To the most “experienced” among them I asked to abandon the images for which they are recognized to show a hidden side of their work. With grade and (for me) unexpected success: I discovered images that I would never expect to find in their archives. Instead, I asked the novices for an act of courage: to try, come out, showing their work alongside professionals with whom they would never dream of having to measure themselves.
This exhibition was then born from a conviction that I matured softly but has become, over time, steel in decades of years of observation of photography: advertising, art, sports …
The writer is never a professor, a graduate critic or an art historian. A gap that has only one positive aspect, my gaze is never preconceived. For me even are all the photos that happen under my eyes as well as all the areas from which they come: if they excite me or teach me something – which is the same thing – then they are beautiful. Point.
Lastly. I have been working on this small (but only for square meters of exhibition) exhibition for months: I really enjoyed doing it, I know for sure that it also excited the other 9 in the group. Even to one (only apparently) the least organic of all: the sound engineer who is yes Sicilian but is also the youngest and most distant (lives in London): for me he too in his own way is also an artist visual What does he have to do with photography? Come and listen to its soundproofing