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email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
Portraits in the Square - Critical text by Roberto Mutti
THE MAGIC BOX
by Roberto Mutti
All the great civilizations of the past possess,
even if only to a minimal extent, real machines
Alexandre Koyré
Twisted and complicated is the path that characterizes the birth of scientific discoveries. Following a widely shared logic but, as we will see, a rather unreliable one, one should follow a linear progression: the generally felt need for a tool that does not yet exist pushes inventors to create the tool, which then finds immediate application. To give a significant example that seems to confirm this theory, this is how the chronometer was born in an era like the eighteenth century, when science began to demand precision and reliability, while Galileo Galilei was instead forced to measure the time of movement on an inclined plane with a water hourglass. All simple? Not at all, because things change radically if we change the example: in fact, the birth of the clock was very different, surprisingly establishing itself in societies that still regulated their rhythms according to natural cycles, with people who rose at dawn, ate at noon and at dusk, went to bed at nightfall, and if they looked at the tower where a large clock was proudly displayed, it was not to know the precise time. As an astute scholar of these issues, the philosopher Alexandre Koyré, rightly noted, “the clockmakers of the Middle Ages knew how to build machines of marvelous complexity and ingenuity that could reproduce the movement of the planets, set in motion series of human figures, and make the hours chime with carillons of bells, but they were never able to make them indicate the time accurately” (1). It would therefore be much more correct to state that in human history, technology precedes science and inventions do not necessarily constitute a mechanical and immediate response to the needs of society. Sometimes, in fact, we may be surprised that relatively simple inventions like the harness for draft horses did not come from ingenious solutions by the peasants who used those animals, but from customs acquired from the barbarians with whom they had come into contact (2). On the other hand, it is curious to note that the telescope, even before becoming the scientific instrument we all know in the hands of Galileo Galilei, was very widespread in Holland as a curiosity and a bizarre toy. The Italian scientist therefore did not invent the object but modified its use (symbolically we could imagine that the revolutionary gesture was to point the telescope towards the sky), revealing those potentialities that others had not imagined.
It is generally customary to date the invention of the photographic process to that August 19, 1839, when the scientist and socialist parliamentarian François Arago presented to the members of the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts, in a joint session at the Institut de France in Paris, the technical details of the invention by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and Nicéphore Nièpce. The enthusiasm that accompanied the announcement seems surprising today: the waiting crowd was filled with uncontrollable excitement, and already the next day many rushed to shops to buy the new devices that allowed the creation of images “without any knowledge of drawing,” as Arago explained, while others thundered against “Daguerre, the maddest of madmen who boasts of being able to do unheard-of things and would in this way surpass the Creator of the world,” as wrote the anonymous editorialist of the traditionalist Catholic newspaper “Leipziger Stadtanzeiger.” Enthusiasts and detractors, however, seemed to forget that photography already had a history to reckon with: the more recent one linked to the experiments of inventors as skilled as they were unrecognized (3), and the much older one linked to the process of reproducing reality. The latter had not foreseen the possibility of permanently fixing the image on a paper or metal support and had been content to consider it a useful means to guide the hand of the draftsman or a perceptual phenomenon to be observed with attention and wonder. In both cases, a device was used that can rightfully be considered the forerunner of today’s camera, which even inherits its name, “camera,” in the English language. The camera obscura came in various forms, but the smallest and most widespread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were wooden parallelepipeds with a biconvex lens inserted in the front face through which the image passed, which, reflected by a mirror inclined at 45° placed inside the device, was projected onto the upper part consisting of a ground glass. In this way, by placing a sheet of light paper on a flat surface, it was possible to draw a sketch on the surface that faithfully reproduced the perspectives and correct dimensions. The paintings of two eighteenth-century painters, the Venetian Antonio Canal “Canaletto” and the Dutch-born Italian Gaspare Vanvitelli, are among the most striking examples of the use of this technique with surprising results (4). But, if the application of lenses dates back to 1550, when the Italian Girolamo Cardano recommended it as an improvement, the existence of the simple camera obscura is very ancient. Wanting to observe solar eclipses but knowing they could not do so directly to avoid harming their eyesight, the ancients devised ingenious systems: Aristotle described the crescent-shaped image of the sun in partial eclipse projected onto the ground through the holes of a sieve, but an extraordinarily detailed description of the phenomenon is given by the great Arab philosopher Al Gazali, known for his “Destructio philosophorum” but also for a treatise on optics in which he explains the existence of a room in which observers locked themselves to observe the eclipse on the side opposite to where the image entered through a tiny opening: “If the image of the sun at the moment of a non-total eclipse falls through a small round hole onto a flat surface opposite, it will have the shape of a crescent. The image of the sun reveals this property only when the hole is very small” (5). We are around 1100 AD, and this is the first clear description of a pinhole, the first “lens” that we can consider at the origins of the photographic process.
Photography is one of those inventions that has rapidly changed thanks to the extraordinary evolution of technology: optical studies have made it possible to build increasingly sophisticated lenses by correcting aberrations and distortions, mechanical studies have enabled the application of iris diaphragms to modify the aperture, and chemical studies have led to the creation of increasingly sensitive films capable of producing sharp images of excellent quality. Only the camera itself has remained conceptually very similar to those of the past and, in fact, while single-lens reflex cameras with interchangeable lenses have different shapes, medium and large format view cameras even outwardly resemble those used in the nineteenth century.
If we recalled at the beginning of our discussion that the birth of scientific discoveries is complicated and anything but linear because it is often dictated more by curiosity than by necessity, more by chance than by calculation, it is equally true that the development and evolution of research also follows this irregular path, and the field of photography is no exception. While, in fact, all energies are focused on producing the sharpest possible images (but already the details reproduced by daguerreotypes were perfectly visible), while researchers compete to create the brightest lenses (6), there are those who persist in using the pinhole technique which, as is known, produces images that are not particularly sharp and, due to its modest brightness, requires particularly long exposure times. In the nineteenth century, there were splendid cameras of this kind, characterized by particularly refined aesthetics with well-polished wooden bodies and brass fittings. Contemporaries, on the other hand, are divided into groups that follow the dictates of two real schools of thought. Some focus on the poverty of the means, on the idea that anyone can, with little expense and few resources, build an effective camera using a cardboard shoebox or a tin candy box: this emphasis also contains an anti-consumerist polemic, even if in other cases the aim is to teach the photographic process in elementary schools. An internal variant of this group consists of those who use poor means (7) and absolutely far removed even in their outward appearance from the camera (a sandwich with film hidden inside, but also a tube, a shell) to thus achieve a result—the image—that reveals itself as artistic because it is the result of creativity more than of technique.
Another group consists of those who consider the camera a scientific instrument that therefore deserves all the necessary care and attention: they make well-crafted cameras, often drawing on the beloved aesthetics of those from the past, and consider the construction of pinholes an extremely complex process that uses the most advanced technologies.
Paolo Aldi belongs to this last category and declares it with pride when he talks about HAL, the camera he himself designed and built, explaining that he felt the need to use a machine created in his own “image and likeness” to emphasize the importance of a direct, almost physical relationship that brings him closer to the entire process of making photographs. However important, the technical aspect is not significant in itself except insofar as it allows the photographer to work in complete peace of mind and to concentrate totally on the project he is bringing to life. When the subject is landscape—and this happens very often because long exposure times are well suited to a subject that is not moving—the same problems faced by the first daguerreotypists arise, such as the “disappearance” of everything that, by moving, cannot leave a trace of its passage, resulting in a vaguely dreamlike atmosphere. But even when the subject is portraits, it is as if time has stopped, because people must accept the new situation of having to remain still in front of the camera for a period ranging, depending on the case, from twenty seconds to a minute and a half. “Portraits in the Square” is therefore a work that already starts from a sense of displacement, because Paolo Aldi asks the people he photographs to accept a direct relationship, to pose by interpreting themselves and, ultimately, to share his project as protagonists. Apparently, everything is very simple: a large wooden camera placed on a tripod, a simple backdrop held up by stands for those who prefer a neutral background, a city square in which to set everything, and the request to locals and tourists alike to pose. There does not seem to be much difference compared to the late nineteenth century, when the itinerant photographer would reach a location and offer his services to those who, in exchange for a few lire, could obtain a portrait on ferrotype (the economical version of the daguerreotype) or on paper. Obviously, things change quite a bit if we examine the psychological dynamics more closely: our ancestors often appeared rather awkward in front of the lens, as they were certainly not used to being photographed, while we contemporaries, who deal with photography daily, have lost that kind of rigidity but have acquired, instead, the habit of posing, sacrificing spontaneity for conventional theatricality. The need to deal with a so-called extended time, however, means that the people portrayed choose more comfortable postures, exercise intense self-control, and acquire that awareness of their own body in front of the lens that the habit of using photo booth machines has generally made most people lose. Now, precisely by virtue of this awareness, the scene changes: some approach with curiosity, some investigate to understand the mechanism, some are attracted by the idea of having an unusual portrait, some wait for the photograph to dry, some ask questions. Paolo Aldi has already achieved what he wanted, that is, to make people understand that a photograph that is not a snapshot is capable of arousing interest, fostering interpersonal relationships, and creating an atmosphere. But when you look at his results, you realize that what you are looking at are images of great quality, capable of conveying a sense of strong dynamism. The most striking aspect—but, curiously, it is the one that is not immediately perceptible and is only rationalized later—concerns the enormous depth of field that a minimal aperture can ensure, allowing both the subject and the house far behind them, the group of friends and the fountain around which they are gathered, the paving in the foreground with a policeman standing at the center of the image surrounded by houses, to be perfectly in focus. Particularly spectacular are the images taken inside the Mart, because the structure, bright and geometrically marked, seems to emphasize the sense of a depth that expands in every direction. There are cases where children, who rarely know how to curb their dynamism, appear more or less noticeably blurred, but this, far from being a limitation, gives the photograph a pleasant spontaneity. Sometimes the backdrop is used, and Paolo Aldi wisely chooses not to hide the structure that supports it, to achieve a very effective alienating effect because it gives the sense of carving out a specific space within the larger one in which it is set. The alienation is also present in the print itself, which shows the marks of the film used—a positive-negative Polaroid—especially in the area that borders the upper part as well as in the light dark marks that indicate the fall-off of light at the outer edges: these are interesting elements because they concern the photographic medium, its language, its detachment from a totally faithful reproduction of reality. But the most striking images are those dominated by a strong sense of geometry: a young couple in Riva del Garda, a man reading the newspaper on the edge of a beautiful fountain, a woman sitting on the steps of a churchyard, but above all, the portrait of an old actor stands out. Perfectly at ease in front of the lens, he assumes a collected position—the knees close together, hands resting on the handle of a closed umbrella—and, hiding the stool on which he is sitting, dominates the center of a scene where the marble floor designs look like those of a stage and the houses in the background like painted scenery. Once again, a camera, imprisoning time and space, reminding us that photography is above all the result of the work of light, reveals itself for what it is: a magic box.
NOTE
(1) Alexandre Koyré “The Philosophers and the Machine” published in the journal “Critique” in 1948, then appeared in “From the World of Approximation to the Universe of Precision”, Einaudi, 1967.
(2) The horse was once tied, just like the ox, to a yoke that, however, compressed its jugular, preventing it from using all its strength. The new harness, a sort of large leather ring that passed over the head, instead rested on the animal’s shoulders, allowing it to move freely.
(3) It is really difficult to remember them all, but among the most well-known it is right to mention the French official Hippolyte Bayard, who as early as 1837 invented the positive/negative process on paper (but who was overshadowed by the competition from Daguerre, who was much more skilled at finding political support for his invention), the Swiss Friedrich Gerber, who in 1836 had already produced photographs on sheets of paper coated with silver salts, the Englishman Thomas Wedgwood, who in the early 1800s made contact prints of images that he was unable to fix, and his compatriot Henry Fox Talbot, who in 1835 created the first paper negative that has come down to us and who realized the potential of positive reproduction, which he patented in 1841 under the name "calotype."
(4) It is necessary to remember here that Giovanni Battista Della Porta was already using this instrument in the sixteenth century.
(5) The quote is reported by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim in their “A Concise History of Photography”, Thames & Hudson, 1965.
(6) During World War II, Leitz managed to create a lens for night reconnaissance with the extraordinary aperture of f/0.85, but it was in 1966 that they began serial production of their Noctilux 50mm f/1.2, which ten years later was further improved, reaching the unmatched brightness of f/1.
(7) Paolo Gioli belongs to this category, an artist who can be associated with the Arte Povera movement for many reasons. It was his idea to use not only sandwiches, shells, and tubes as "cameras," but also a flute, a grater, two crackers, a button, a rubber cone normally used on roads, and even a closed fist. A detailed list of these choices appears in the appendix to Paolo Gioli “Gran Positivo nel crudele spazio stenopeico”, Alinari, 1991.