Few Moments Ago | 2010
It’s like looking around when you are lost, searching for a clue, a familiar object or any sign, something known or believed as such, a vague memory. The photographic series that Gianpaolo Arena has dedicated to the liminal landscape of Savignano sul Rubicone, a small town in the very first inland of the Romagna region, seems to be moving along these strict guidelines, deliberately narrowing the field of view in a sort of last effort necessary to overcome disorientation. The physical space of a place, forced between the powerful straight mark of the Via Emilia and the nearby Adriatic coast, is reflected in shots so merciless as to suggest their own nature of detail, even in the few cases where the horizons seem to finally stretch and open up larger portions of sky and air. Yet everyday objects, cars and gardens in their exasperated customization, as well as the faces of elderly people behind the gates or windows, seem to speak as little as locked doors or tightly shut mouths, as cases and boxes that have been closed too long, and don’t tell about themselves and this place where they belong much more than the figures portrayed from behind or the few pieces of white sky beyond which your gaze gets lost, still without reference. It makes you wonder again, about where we are. The loss of one or more identities comes this way as well, and it’s made of many tiny and unrelated differences, casually piled up together as if to keep them together, it were enough to lower one’s gaze, while it is only fear of the future that crumbles the past, and what we were until a few moments ago.
Text by Andrea Filippin
Originally published in the April 2011 issue 14 of Unless You Will