Twenty years dying, to give birth to oneself
This verse was not created for this collection. But words are liquid and as such adapt to every form and container. Thus, the verse was not created for this collection, but belongs to it.
To be born means to take on a form, to obtain a body within which one can breathe and change: it is a passive and unintentional act. To give birth is the closest creative expression to Creation, the most carnal manifestation of will. To give birth to oneself is an improper reflexive verb, an irregularity legitimised only in poetry and art, for the sake of exactness, not correctness.
Exactly like that: giving birth to oneself, being aware of desiring a form to be delivered autonomously to one self, cultivated for too long in the shadows of an invisible and suffocating womb, in which one was able to reflect, grow, and then emerge into the light without asking anyone for forgiveness. To defend one’s choices, not to be ashamed of one’s limits and desires, but to reshape them by learning to love them.
Twenty years to die, to give birth to oneself.
RiMEMBRA originates from this snapshot of Life.
The project has been going on for at least four years, as the idea of collecting and organising the most representative material in his archive has been in Matteo Piacenti’s mind since his early teens, a moment when photography, after three years of curiosity and uncertainty, adamantly took root in him, with the appearance ofan unripe but fertile seed of an identity yet to be constructed. And since identity is a changing matter, all we can do is to grasp it and express it in the present moment, taking stock of past moments without precluding the future ones.
The chronological span covered by the selection includes the period between 2017 and 2021, since the previous years had been occupied by an unaware, albeit agile and enthusiastic, research typical of the initial stages: street scenes and everyday situations, through a childish adherence to reality characterised by the fear of offending the genuineness of a shot with post-production, not yet knowing how much authenticity could emerge by moving a curve or burning a background.
Over time, the camera takes on the appearance of an instrument of communication and interaction with others, leading the young photographer to direct his lens towards the human figure, an imperishable and never sterile subject. His production clearly shows a predilection for male faces, captured both as an integral part and compositional focus of the image, presenting sharp features or unexpected delicacies that draw the balance and stimulate the talent to be realized, and as “boys of life” to be held by his side.
Becoming conscious of his homosexuality has certainly had an impact on Piacenti’s artistic and personal path, but it is not as a result of it that his photography has been characterised by all the elements that it now displays. On the contrary, it could be said that it was the spontaneous emergence of those same elements that revealed a hitherto unheard but crucial sexual orientation.
Without looking for any metaphysics in which to hypothesise and trace “his own essence”, the photographer extracts pieces of himself from the concreteness of other people’s flesh: bodies, portraits, gestures and grimaces of young men on whom it is easy to find a familiar skin, a familiar scent, and superimpose his ownones. It is an instinct, a sudden or moderate sensation, a sweet dance of understanding too natural and simple to be able to do without it. At twenty years of age, one is too young not to consider such a recognition of body and soul absolute. But one is not young enough not to be looking for an objective confirmation of the solidity of the identity bond. You only need to leaf through the previous pages to achieve it.
It is not a question of the mere beauty of the subjects, of compositional balance, of attention to detail or balanced eroticism: all this constitutes the photo and sustains its value. And yet, this is not the reason why one keeps one’s gaze there and, in the seconds of observation, puts one’s weapons away.
What disarms is sincerity. Whether the light is soft or violent, the cut sharp or confused, the lips covered or parted, the colour offered or denied, in the space of an image there is a spirit laid bare. A free dimension is defined, where the model is not subordinated to the shot, and the photograph is not a function of the subject, but they purely coexist, embracing an external-internal hand that suggests its presence in this interwoven harmony. This is how it is and cannot be otherwise. Sic et simpliciter.
The undeniable essentiality of black and white contributes to the overall charm; essential both in terms of autonomous exhaustiveness and formal cleanliness. Far from sinning in sentimentality, it can certainly be said that false duotone has been and continues to be Matteo’s first, true love.
Colour distracts the viewer, appropriating every space and diminishing the volume: this is, in short, the impression that has long settled in his original conception of photography. Non-colour, on the other hand, allows lines, depth and structure to redeem and expose themselves: the composition is thus expressed through the play of the binary opposition presence/absence of light, the only ink.
«I look for light, I don’t need anything else»: by constantly repeating it, it is possible that Matteo too had managed to convince himself of the dependence he claimed to have on the illuminated glow of a studio spotlight. In itself, white does not speak, it only acquires a voice when it is immersed in the darkness, in the carnivorous and all-encompassing background behind Tommaso, the second-oldest photo. Today, Piacentiknows he owes a debt to that blackness, because he better understands how much uncertainty and more or less conscious restlessness was concealed within that void, the sculptural and aesthetic function of which remains primary, giving mass and depth to the subjects. An intimate and constant darkness, from which Valerio and Simone seem to announce the liberation.
As the collection reveals, black and white continues to dominate, disclosing new potentialities through the post-production work so feared at the outset. The contrasts are reinforced only when the impression obtained requires it, since the Caravaggesque tendency does not always respond to the expressive needs of an image.At times, a diffuse grey dominates, offering an opacifying lightness that is different from the usual, but equally worthy of being. At other times, shadows devour the subject, able to survive only thanks to single highlights and cuts of a wide scope. Or again, overturning the principle, the light imposes itself and suffocateselements, sparing only the most resistant physiognomic features: the latest photographs are emblematic of this.
Despite the obvious evolution in the use of B&W, the real revolution is probably the introduction of colour. After years of denial, approaching colour seemed like an act of courage; and indeed it carried all the weight of it. A technical weight, connected to the initial inability to manage it adequately; an aesthetic weight, having to accustom the eye to other parameters of taste, hitherto precluded; an “ethical” weight, having long stigmatised polychromy as foreign.
But what kind of colour are we looking at?
Francesco, Daniele and Alex are the only polychrome survivors of the careful inspection that selected the 45 shots in the collection. In their peculiarity, they are not marginalised from the rest, because they follow the same rhythm, displaying themselves with humility and elegance, without the pride of standing out and invading the gaze. The substantial contribution of grey, the mild saturation and the tonal range concentrated on multiple shades of a few mother colours (sepia, army green, petroleum blue, powder pink, earth tones) allow colour to integrate with non-colour in grace and essentiality.
The photographic act does not end between the pose and the lens: there is an unscripted performance that involves knowledge, often intimate but not always, between the photographer and his models. Behind and inside the images, there are thoughts and states of mind, moans and sighs, a laugh as well as an embarrassed or lascivious voice; or just friendly, if not reluctant. The first-time viewer can perceive them, but there is a reason why the collection is called RiMEMBRA (ReMEMBER). Piacenti communicates it to the world and makes a warning to himself: remember. Remember the body, the members, the skin with which this photo is dressed and which breathes in it: it is theirs, like yours. Remember, repeat, re-live.
To continue building himself up in a perpetual rediscovery, experimenting with techniques and subjects, such as the dared colour or the sudden portrait of a woman with which he promises, at the end of the book, new horizons. To continue, without ever considering himself finished. Also because, at the age of twenty, it would not only be presumptuous, but completely foolish; miserable, even. So, remember.
In arranging the materials, chronological criteria have been ignored, by virtue of the individuality of each photograph and by emphasising the timelessness of the remembrance, which collects memories in succession, but manifesting them arbitrarily: depending on the stimuli, it sources the right moment from its own catchment. Sometimes, it is pure chance; and everything happens in a brief instant, the time of a click. What is certain is that nothing is really left to chance: memory is anarchic, but not because of this it is free.
Choosing an order to follow is a tarot game with potentially indefinite sequences, as photographs communicate mutually and pleasantly in whatever way they are arranged. By shuffling the cards, each path discloses new pearls: simply invert the position of two photos and along the line of the vertical shadow of one, now the cut of the other emerges.
But then again: to choose a layout would imply telling an overall story with singular stages, forgetting that each photograph is a story in itself, a moving piece immersed in the indefinite flow of existence and, in this volume, of the young artist’s identity. It is therefore a dialogue without constraints that fossilise it.
As in any challenge, the hardest part is to begin, to find the point that will open the way to the path, whatever it may be. Tracing the entrance, the beginning: the dawn. Dawn is the principle par excellence, the prelude to light, the discretion that announces a perpetual future that is never the same.
Dawn is the certainty of something coming and the uncertainty of what will be; it is the photo with which Piacenti captures the last appendages of naivety, that goes back to when the attraction to the camera was still a curious intrigue, but no longer a purposeless game.
Dawn is unique; it stands out from the rest of the collection both in character and age. It belongs to a transitional phase, an intimate reality, the dynamics and the flavour of which not even the photographer knows and remembers clearly: he knows he wanted to try, he knows he dared to hope; he knows and remembers with gratitude the aware glances, the advice and the stimuli of those who believed in his passion, soon discovered as a talent. It was something, but he did not know what. Now he begins to understand it.
Dawn shows three children: one is standing, two are running; two moments of one will.
Dawn is the precarious balance on which it rests before catching the wind.
Text by Sofia Fabbrianesi
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