Acquatica
Year: 2018 – 2023
Device: AGFA LEBOX OCEAN VISTA 400 – disposable analog camera
Concept and photography: Gaia Adducchio
Curated by: Beatrice Luzi, art historian and art curator
The project is composed by more than 100 photos. Each image is a Fine art Giclée with archival pigments HP Vivera print on Photo Rag Satin Hahnemühle 310gr paper applied on aluminum.
The catalog and promotional materials for the project and solo exhibition “Acquatica” at Carlo Gallerati’s Galleria Gallerati were produced thanks to the contribution of Unione Europea Esperti d’Arte Onlus. The exhibition catalog is edited by the publishing house Unione Europea Esperti d’Arte.
You can purchase my work also on:
www.galleriagallerati.it
“Don’t you know you can see the one you love in the water?
When I was little I did that so many times, and when I saw your face I recognized it immediately!”
Jean Vigo – «L’Atalante» – 1934
Underwater the body has no weight, moving free from gravity and all care, hiding from the eyes of others tendencies and unconditioned, uninhibited and honest movements. To peek underwater allows a privileged vision of human behaviors and to translate them into photography expresses the necessity of telling all its irony, tenderness and fascination. Partly out of joyful curiosity, partly out of anthropological voyeurism, the ends that move Acquatica, photographic series realized with disposable analog film cameras, is to investigate human nature through the intimate and secret movements of the bodies which, abandoned to the pleasure of the sea, describe moments of carefreeness, solitude and vulnerability but also of strong and deep connection with oneself. The exclusion of the faces, safe above the level of the sea or covered up by snorkeling masks, becomes this way functional to the narration’s chorus. An interweaving of exiting and moving voices emerges in which funny and grotesque attitudes take turns with gestures of care and affection, culminating in instants of great poetry in which the body, immersed in water and light, seems to dematerialize in order to take transfigured and evanescent shapes. The analog film, with its unpredictable imperfections, acts in this context as a metaphor for human happenings, the water, with its density, becomes a filter from objective reality and light rises to a warm and embracing manifestation of transcendence. The visual path implied in the project explores these multiple aspects of the human animal, from the most physical and prosaic components of everyday life up to the intense, touched intuition of being a creature striving for the absolute. These images are able to convey the deep affection of the author for her unaware and unknown protagonists and show a loving empathy that celebrates, without any rhetoric, our fleeting and amazing uniqueness.
Beatrice Luzi
Festival & Exhibitions
October 2024 – is shown at Salon d’Automne in Paris, France
https://www.salon-automne.com/en/home/
May 2024 – it’s shown at the “Festa dell’ Arte di Monteverde – 10 anni del teatri di Villa Pamphilj” curated by Federico Raponi, Rome, Italy
April 2024 – it’s exhibited by Carlo Gallerati at the Momart Gallery in Matera (in Italy) with the collective “Habitat” curated by Simona Spinella
https://www.galleriagallerati.it/
February 2024 – is shown at the Grand Palais Ephémère, Ecole Militaire -Tour Eiffel in Paris during the Salon Comparaisons exhibition, France
https://comparaisons.org/
February 2024 – it’s exhibiting at Étienne De Causans Gallery in Paris for the collective exhibition “Digital is my Art – 2nd edition” curated by Isabelle Schmitt
http://isphoto.fr
January 2024 – is shown at Salon d’Automne in Paris, France
https://www.salon-automne.com/en/home/
December 2023/February 2023 – first preview of the project presented during the solo exhibition a “Acquatica” curated by Beatrice Luzi at Galleria Gallerati, Rome www.galleriagallerati.it
The catalog and promotional materials were produced with the help of the Unione Europea Esperti d’Arte Onlus. The exhibition catalog is edited by the Unione Europea Esperti d’Arte publishing house
https://www.espertiarte.it/
