FABIO DEL RE

Série Morandi  

From where does a work start? What makes you press the shutter? In the Morandi Series, Fabio Del Re started from a concrete and at the same time subjective point: he wanted to generate an image that was able to translate the sensation he felt when he saw Giorgio Morandi's paintings in 2012, in Porto Alegre.

It was not the still life that he was interested, but the issues Morandi's paintings brought up such as the relation between the objects and the background, the discreet volume, the layers of paint, and the handcraft presence. A painting that is soothing, with quiet colors that feels like it is stretching in time, or even occupies another time. A painting that persists in our memory in a quiet form. Overwhelming but familiar, almost as if it has always being there.

From this subjective feeling came out the first photograph of Fabio's Morandi Series, in 2013. Its basis: photography. Fabio is a photographer with a keen eye to the scene and to the objects, in love with the photographic process. In the works that consist this series, the analog and digital photography are intertwined. They play also with juxtaposition of negatives, double exposures, and re-photographing the prints. They are the layers that, like in the canvas, overlaps, build up a poetic result.

The objects compose different configurations, which are not always unveiled at first sight. Sometimes the volume/object appears clearly; in others, the image appears flat as an engraving. Negative and positive complement each other showing the features of the photographic process. The scale of the objects, in some prints, look strange, others, small and delicate, leading us to a more intimate realm, which exists in the relationship with these objects. Some marks, impregnated by the silver of the expired film, are present and keep repeating. In all photographs of these series, Fabio leaves a hint of his creative process. With care, we can comprehend how the object starts to become a photograph and the path the photographer chooses to take.

The guideline that runs through the photographs indicates Fabio's own way of working, the pleasure in finding and translating that first subjective feeling that captured his attention in front of the paintings. Preparing the scene, arranging the objects, working the light, considering the shapes and volumes; storing the machine, shooting the photo. Developing the negatives, choosing, cutting, editing,  and re-photographing. Finally, turning the objects into an image, but not necessarily in a clear and obvious image, but an image that distend the time, which, with its layers, talks about the subjectivity of the look, the attention span to realize and, also, to enable us to grasp the process.

By Luisa Kiefer, Curator