Sometimes I am asked what my ties are with my works, after 15 years practising as a photographer.
I reply spontaneously: "I remember ."
that is, if the questioner 's tone of voice is really serious
and expects an answer.
Some struggle to discover the gist of my poetics and politics
?- the thread of Ariane, as it were -, and subject me to a sort of cross-examination.
Doing a job which is not very secure and at times precarious,
I think it is right to go through its advantages.
One of these is, I think, being able to keep an open mind about one's own situation.
This attitude - of a supposed anarchist - creates a sense of perplexity
in those who, on entering a gallery, like private house, wish to recognise at a glance
the artist or photographer who has produced the work.
We may say that recognisability encourages the market .As if the social domand on artistic operations were contradictory: on the one hand, the satisfaction of having liberty without doctrine and being able to delegate doctrine to imagination, and on the other hand a demand for re-assurance: you are this, and you do this.
There are two common denominators in my work, which it is, perhaps, worth explaining and emphasising. The first is photography. I am democratic in the abstract sense, in which photography is a democratcally expressive medium.
In order to take straightforward snapshots no spcial technical preparations or special studies are necessary.
And this, if compared with painting (the classical instrument of figurative art), renders photograhy a popular medium, with a wide range of uses.
The same landscape, reproduced pictorially and photographically, differs not only in degree of realism, but also in the psychological distance existing between object and observer.
I have learnt from my own experience that visual memories of many persons who are dear to me do not depend directly on memories of past realities, but on memories of photographs that portray them. I love the intrinsic capacity of photography to sculpt memories in the human mind. The second denominator, of which I wish to speak, is the method of using photography. Employing a particular technique has, over the years, become more and more congenial to me. For want of a better term, I call it "rolled up". The printed photograph is literally rolled up, as if to be thrown away - then later spread out on an adhesive canvas, as if to be preserved. This technique has a twofold sense corrresponding to my vision of the world. The finished image lives suspended between rejection and recovery. It is the memory of a prompt rejection. Besides the chosen medium and the method of personalising it, I believe it is important in the arts to feel free to reflect, with an open look beyond current fashions, and an expressive need.
Luigi Billi
www.luigibilli.com
