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To avoid offending certain sensitivities, we warn that the site contains explicit content
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
Fluctuations - Work Notes
I think it is useful to share these notes of mine, dating back to 1998, to contribute with more information to the understanding of the Fluttuazioni cycle.
Excerpt from Paolo Aldi's work notes for the creation of “Fluttuazioni”
PHOTOGRAPHY
I claim for photography the value of a medium that allows me to express my personal interpretation of the world, an artistic interpretation not necessarily tied to real events, but rather to my intuition, perception, sensitivity, and imagination.
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL REFERENCES
Surrealist photography plays on the particular relationship with reality that every photograph possesses. Photography is an imprint, a decal of the real, it is a trace—obtained through a photochemical process—linked to the concrete objects to which it refers according to a causal relationship similar to that which exists for a fingerprint or a footprint. Photography is genetically different from painting, sculpture, and drawing; in the genealogical tree of representations, it is situated on the side of handprints, death masks, the Shroud, or the traces of seagulls on the beach. Technically and semiologically, drawings and paintings are icons, while photographs are indices.
The taxonomy of signs by C.S. Peirce distinguishes three fundamental types of signs. First, there are signs that function at a purely conventional level of arbitrary relationship between signifier and referent: words are a good example of this, and Peirce calls them symbols. Then there are signs that represent the referent by proxy in accordance with a similarity or visual resemblance, even if rough: one can take the example of paintings, but also of maps and geographic charts. This type of sign has been given the name icons. Finally, the third and last type: the index—the trace, the fingerprint, the medical symptom—where the referent is evoked by means of a trace or an imprint. A subgroup of indices are imprints, the traces that something leaves in space. Not only do footprints belong to this category, but also photographs, which are the imprint of an event obtained through a photochemical process—in that the relationship between the event and the photograph is a physical cause. It is because of this cause-effect relationship that photographic images are considered documents with evidential value, a value that is one of the traits of the other members of the same category (such as fingerprints or footprints) as they are the reified, externalized trace of their referents.
Dadaists, surrealists, and constructivists discovered that photography was not just a precise eye made up of a lens and diaphragm, but also a darkroom and sensitive materials.
Art has left, for a hundred years, the reassuring ground of the recognizable.
FLUCTUATIONS: title of the installation
Aldo Gabrielli - Mondadori:
Fluctuation: wavering, alternating movement, uncertainty, oscillation
Floating: undulating, buoyant, agitated.
Figurative: doubtful, uncertain
Float: surge, sway, float, pitch, roll, stir
Figurative: to be uncertain, doubtful
PHOTOGRAPHING A KNOT: meaning
To photograph a nude means to defend it from the idea that it is simply a naked body.
One must go beyond the mere physical fact to insert the subject into a poetic discourse, create a "metaphor" and thus a flow between represented and unrepresented.
BEYOND THE NUDE
The corporeality of the subject is overturned in the realm of the surreal.
I challenge the expectations of the viewer, provoking a sort of “mental gymnastics” so that their visual attention shifts from the represented body to visions of human existence.
HOW THEY SHOULD BE AND WHAT THEY SHOULD “GIVE”
THE PHOTOGRAPHS “FLUCTUATIONS”
Photography presents, as the fundamental "figure" of its communication, a "mental form," a "concept," rather than an image.
The work does not aim to reproduce reality in its phenomenal appearance; it goes beyond the real vision, seeking to penetrate more deeply into being, searching for a more mental vision.
In my photos there is a world that is neither specified nor defined; it belongs, in its countless variations, to the viewer.
I represent life, which is a simultaneous chaos of events, happenings, and spiritual rhythms.
I represent life, which is an occasion for one doubt after another.
THE SHOOTING WORK
Once the work is set up, the model chosen, and the project explained to her, I arrive at the photo shoot session. In the shooting session, I try to express the inner "self" in complete freedom as it truly is, without the intervention of reason.
SHOOTING TECHNIQUES TO USE
Manipulate images by giving ample space to chance and therefore to the unexpected, the unconscious, and nonsense.
Use black and white infrared film. Film originally created for military and scientific uses has the ability to record, in addition to the normal band of colors visible to us, also part of the infrared radiation band (which we humans are not able to perceive).
Despite considerable experience in its use, the results of the shots can only be imagined and not fully previewed.
Creative use allows for the creation of magical and muffled atmospheres, as well as dramatic and anguished ones, more or less surreal depending on its use. Its characteristic constructive and formal feature is a splendid and evident "grain".
“Incorrect” images. The secret of “incorrect” images seen from above, below, or in perspective lies in the fact that the camera reproduces the pure optical image, thus showing distinctions, distortions, perspectives, etc. that are optically real, while our eye integrates the optical image with our intellectual experience, through formal and spatial associative links, into a conceptual image.
Moved.
ORBITAL: it is the region of space, around the nucleus, where there is at least a 90% probability of finding the electron and where the electron spends more than 90% of its time.
SPIN: the spin quantum number (from the English "to spin" = to rotate) indicates the direction of rotation (clockwise or counterclockwise) with which the electron rotates around its own axis; it can only take the values - and +.
The limb or the entire body is not fully visible, but is indicated by an area in which we sense their existence, and thus our eye integrates its perception with our intellectual experience, through formal and spatial associative connections, into a conceptual image.
PHOTO PRINT
Conduct research during the photo printing phase to overcome the limitations imposed by the commercial production of the materials that make up the image support and the image itself, as it is a mixture of chemicals that react to light.
Overcoming, therefore, the limits that would otherwise lead to a partial standardization of research, of the artistic work that often ends up being reduced to just the moment of introspection of the language of shooting.
The photographic print of an image is the place of interpretation and reflection on the intuition from which the shot originated.
Expanding boundaries by rediscovering older printing techniques, materials made with more silver, better support paper to allow me a more direct relationship with the work.
For this exhibition I use traditional silver print techniques with fine materials.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition is divided into two parts:
1) the "most sensitive" one suspended from balloons (30x40 cm photo in 60x80 cm black passe-partout)
2) the "stronger" one hanging on the walls or laid on the floor (70x100 cm photos mounted on aluminum support)
Differences also highlighted through the use of different photographic papers.
1) for the "most sensitive" part, 15/20 prints on precious paper with silver chloride-bromide emulsion spread on 300-gram cardboard.
BERGGER French paper produced as in the past, capable of warm tones (browns) and great ability to reproduce small nuances and to be very workable in the darkroom.
These images are suspended from black balloons and are anchored to the ground with river stones.
The connections are thin threads and the exhibition itself, therefore, fluctuates.
Promotes deep, engaging emotions.
2) 5 prints on modern design paper with silver bromide emulsion, cool tones. KODAK POLYMAX paper.
Modern paper with more limited tones compared to BERGGER, which still allows me to control the tonal separation necessary for these images; it has very clean whites. Immediate dramatic effect. Through the large format, it allows a perception of motion blur and a gradual entry into the image, into the mark, into the trace.
The photo placed on the ground and meant to be stepped on must be protected with durable plastic material and an additional, overlying, non-slip layer. It is necessary for the viewer to step on the image first in one direction (when entering the second room) and then in the other (when exiting). With the repeated footsteps, traces will overlap, and on the footprint (photo), footprints (from the shoes) will overlap.
The choice of installation is coherent and useful for the theme and perception (it helps to "see" and to "experience").