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email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
Bellum - Critical text
“BELLUM”: ALLEGORIES AND SYMBOLISM IN SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY
BY PAOLO ALDI
by Romina Zanon
«Even grammarians have intuited the nature of war: some claim that it is called "bellum" by antithesis, because it has nothing good, nor beautiful […]. Others prefer to derive the word "bellum" from "bellua", beast: because it is beastly, not human, to engage in mutual extermination.» This reflection by Erasmus of Rotterdam represents the conceptual preamble of “Bellum”, the latest visual work by experimental photographer Paolo Aldi (resident in Nomi). The work—which consists of ten polyptychs, each taking shape from a sequence of twelve images—represents a visual reflection on contemporary society torn apart by cruel wars of self-destruction and a wearing crisis of moral values that manifests itself in the disorientation of the individual, prey to false modern myths. A humanity unprepared for the unnatural speed of progress and victim of the loneliness imposed by the brutal mechanisms of today's society becomes the protagonist of the “Bellum” panels, titled with names of archaic and mythological flavor, almost to suggest that nothing seems to have changed in the profound nature of man: IRA or The destruction of the world, ECATONCHIRI or Death comes from the sky, URANO or The extermination of the children, MITHRA or The refusal of propaganda, VAYU or The asphyxiation of peoples, ARPOCRATE or I don't want to hear, CRONO or The self-castration of humanity, IXTAB or Suicide, MNEMOSINE or The desire not to lose memory, AHOEITU or The search for recomposition.
In each polyptych—composed of narrative series of images sequential to each other according to a paratactic logic—the allegory of humanity's self-destruction takes the form of the naked body of a woman who draws metaphorical visions driven by a futuristic dynamism. The photographic seriality breaks down gestures and movements of the female figure which, mixed with appearance and reality, presence and representation, opens aesthetic horizons of surrealistic memory: the body, being translated into another dimension of meaning, becomes the pivotal subject of the staging of contemporary social dramas in the above-mentioned senses. Crossing the boundaries of its own anatomy and continually exploring the possibilities of its body-form, the figure goes beyond the dimension of sensible reality, expressing or evoking, also through the use of props, the tormented unconscious of contemporary society in apparitions that stir the “Unheimliche”, that is, a disturbing sensation. The presence of bodies, which offer themselves without modesty or complacency to the gaze, is perceived as familiar and alien at the same time, causing anguish combined with a sense of disorder and alteration («The uncanny is that sort of frightening which goes back to what has been known for a long time, to what is familiar to us» wrote Sigmund Freud in The Uncanny, 1919). Real and fictitious, truth and manipulation become confused. There is no longer any distinction between reality, constructed image, staging, and allegory: the body, through a metamorphosis, becomes a visual metaphor that unsettles representation in its whirlwind of gestures and fragmented volumes. Aldi conceives the photographic panel not as a composition aiming at internal aesthetic harmony, but as the place of a confrontation, if not a conflict, of forces and forms that, precisely through their contrast, evoke the sense of contemporary dramas. Through a peculiar use of chiaroscuro and lighting—a paradigmatic accessory for the relevant materiality with which it shapes surfaces and volumes—the convexities and concavities of the bodies take on particular importance in drawing the dynamic play of movements; likewise, the sharp shadows that mark the bodies and objects seem to absorb the darkness of the black space in a tonal fusion of real forms and metaphysical spaces. The props (maps, newspapers, hammers, nails, televisions, pens)—which, acting as an annex or extension of the body, allow the woman-allegory to express herself in purely iconographic registers—are a fundamental part of the representation. On closer inspection, despite the drama underlying Aldi's narrative, the objects make it possible to visualize the inner forces of the human figure, giving it a vivid presence. They represent containers of meanings that she combines in space, creating new levels of signification among them.
The dynamic interaction of compensatory and confrontational forces between the body and objects gives way, in the last two panels, to a different narrative: the human figure is marked by evocative graphic traits to signify the importance of memory and the need for a collective rebirth. In the plot of the story, a faint hope for a new humanism emerges: to the dissolution of absolute values, as well as ideologies, memory, and moral values, the response is no longer anguish, disorientation, and disintegration, but a will for reconstruction, self-determination, and reinvention of oneself and the community. The painted body becomes a pictorial canvas capable of opposing a sense of permanence to the disintegration of death and the sense of self-destruction that seems to pervade contemporary society.