Da Atget per Basilico. L’archeologia nel vedere
19.4 – 26.5.2024
Works of
Eugène Atget, Gabriele Basilico
Curated by
Steve Bisson
Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm
Lab27 opens the exhibition “From Atget to Basilico. Archaeology in Seeing” on Friday, April 19, 2024, at 9:00 PM. For the first time in Treviso, the works of two masters of photography—Eugène Atget and Gabriele Basilico—are brought together to explore the representation of place, the meaning of collecting space, and archiving images as a form of inner possession. The exhibition, made possible through the collaboration with Dionisio Gavagnin—a passionate collector and connoisseur—reveal two intentional processes that have shaped the history of photography. These works embody a practice that dignifies photography through an “archaeological” perspective, highlighting its enduring relevance and cultural value. The exhibition reflects on the relationship between the two authors through the lens of documentation and the many meanings of seeing—or more precisely, re-seeing—the world. This shift invites us to move our focus from the photographer to the viewer: from who makes the image to who engages with it. In doing so, it encourages deeper reflection on the uses of photography, its creative and interpretative potential, and ultimately, the urgent need to educate the gaze.
Eugène Atget, considered the father of modern and documentary photography, was among the first to grasp the potential of visual reproducibility. At the end of the 19th century, he began cataloguing views and glimpses of Paris. Driven in part by personal hardship, his project became obsessive, his method almost mechanical—anticipating by a century the computational mappings and visual cartographies of tools like Google Earth and Street View. His photographs are relics—or better, archaeological evidence—faded memories of forgotten places. A suspended destiny, frozen in the author’s intent. More than that, they offer clear proof of a reversal in the way we look at the world: a gaze that turns inward, focused on accumulation, preservation, and therefore classification, duplication, and printing. A world easily executable, with simple commands—imitable, replicable. We are, in effect, already in the present day: click and send.
The photography that sees everything, that reaches everywhere, begins with Atget’s endeavor—a gesture of omnipotence aimed at capturing an entire city through a systematic urban scan. In a letter to Paul Léon, director of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, dated November 12, 1920, Atget wrote: “For over twenty years, through my own efforts and initiative, I have collected photographic plates, size 18x24, in all the old streets of historic Paris—artistic documents on beautiful civil architecture from the 16th to the 19th century: countless mansions, historic and curious houses, beautiful facades, doors, woodwork, gateways, ancient fountains, staircases (wooden and wrought iron); the interiors of all the churches of Paris (including complete views and artistic details: Notre-Dame, Saint-Gervais et Protais, Saint-Séverin, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Saint-Roch, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, etc.). This enormous artistic and documentary collection is now complete. I can say that I possess all of old Paris.”
What began as albums intended for sale—to trade in images of the city and support the meager livelihood of their maker—would go on to change forever the way photography is understood and experienced. As Roberta Valtorta writes in her book Gabriele Basilico. L’esperienza dei luoghi: “Whatever its nature, the first characteristic of experience […] is iteration. There is no experience without repetition. But repetition is inevitably tied to memory.”
Now we come to Gabriele Basilico. The architect, half a century later, takes up the mantle of the eccentric French serial photographer like few others have. His work continues to revolve around the city—the urban stage where human relationships take shape—though his vision expands beyond it. The city spills into geography. Milan is his Paris, the place where he worked extensively, “concerned with seeing everything”, as he once said, producing what Roberta Valtorta would later describe as a “collective portrait.”
Prolific and methodical, like the pioneer before him, Basilico was determined to capture the face of transformation—this time of a metropolitan kind, within a global, borderless horizon. In short, as Valtorta writes, “From monuments, through the city, Basilico arrives at the vast open landscape.” Basilico revives the importance of the commission and of design as mediated through the act of seeing. He embodies the idea of a “social mandate”—the public role of the photographer. We see this, for example, in the series "Provincia Antiqua", which gathers images of archaeological sites in France: fragments of landscape that preserve the value of the past and perhaps evoke the memory of a certain beauty. A beauty that, as Aldo Rossi writes, “can emerge from the remnants of what we thought we knew.” And yet, there is more to Basilico. His is an approach dedicated to understanding—a slow reading of the underlying structure of the built narrative he observes. His gaze stretches perception to the point where architecture becomes a body, and its components, “personifications”—an organism that breathes and that today, perhaps, gasps under the strain of excessive spectacle and rapid upheaval. Basilico’s photographs call for a reconciliation with the world, through contemplation—a sensitive way of seeing. Photographs as places of encounter, “a renewed space where interior projects and the external appearance of the world might coincide.”
exhibition views
Da Atget per Basilico. L’archeologia nel vedere
19.4 – 26.5.2024
Works of
Eugène Atget, Gabriele Basilico
Curated by
Steve Bisson
Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm
Lab27 opens the exhibition “From Atget to Basilico. Archaeology in Seeing” on Friday, April 19, 2024, at 9:00 PM. For the first time in Treviso, the works of two masters of photography—Eugène Atget and Gabriele Basilico—are brought together to explore the representation of place, the meaning of collecting space, and archiving images as a form of inner possession. The exhibition, made possible through the collaboration with Dionisio Gavagnin—a passionate collector and connoisseur—reveal two intentional processes that have shaped the history of photography. These works embody a practice that dignifies photography through an “archaeological” perspective, highlighting its enduring relevance and cultural value. The exhibition reflects on the relationship between the two authors through the lens of documentation and the many meanings of seeing—or more precisely, re-seeing—the world. This shift invites us to move our focus from the photographer to the viewer: from who makes the image to who engages with it. In doing so, it encourages deeper reflection on the uses of photography, its creative and interpretative potential, and ultimately, the urgent need to educate the gaze.
Eugène Atget, considered the father of modern and documentary photography, was among the first to grasp the potential of visual reproducibility. At the end of the 19th century, he began cataloguing views and glimpses of Paris. Driven in part by personal hardship, his project became obsessive, his method almost mechanical—anticipating by a century the computational mappings and visual cartographies of tools like Google Earth and Street View. His photographs are relics—or better, archaeological evidence—faded memories of forgotten places. A suspended destiny, frozen in the author’s intent. More than that, they offer clear proof of a reversal in the way we look at the world: a gaze that turns inward, focused on accumulation, preservation, and therefore classification, duplication, and printing. A world easily executable, with simple commands—imitable, replicable. We are, in effect, already in the present day: click and send.
The photography that sees everything, that reaches everywhere, begins with Atget’s endeavor—a gesture of omnipotence aimed at capturing an entire city through a systematic urban scan. In a letter to Paul Léon, director of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, dated November 12, 1920, Atget wrote: “For over twenty years, through my own efforts and initiative, I have collected photographic plates, size 18x24, in all the old streets of historic Paris—artistic documents on beautiful civil architecture from the 16th to the 19th century: countless mansions, historic and curious houses, beautiful facades, doors, woodwork, gateways, ancient fountains, staircases (wooden and wrought iron); the interiors of all the churches of Paris (including complete views and artistic details: Notre-Dame, Saint-Gervais et Protais, Saint-Séverin, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Saint-Roch, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, etc.). This enormous artistic and documentary collection is now complete. I can say that I possess all of old Paris.”
What began as albums intended for sale—to trade in images of the city and support the meager livelihood of their maker—would go on to change forever the way photography is understood and experienced. As Roberta Valtorta writes in her book Gabriele Basilico. L’esperienza dei luoghi: “Whatever its nature, the first characteristic of experience […] is iteration. There is no experience without repetition. But repetition is inevitably tied to memory.”
Now we come to Gabriele Basilico. The architect, half a century later, takes up the mantle of the eccentric French serial photographer like few others have. His work continues to revolve around the city—the urban stage where human relationships take shape—though his vision expands beyond it. The city spills into geography. Milan is his Paris, the place where he worked extensively, “concerned with seeing everything”, as he once said, producing what Roberta Valtorta would later describe as a “collective portrait.”
Prolific and methodical, like the pioneer before him, Basilico was determined to capture the face of transformation—this time of a metropolitan kind, within a global, borderless horizon. In short, as Valtorta writes, “From monuments, through the city, Basilico arrives at the vast open landscape.” Basilico revives the importance of the commission and of design as mediated through the act of seeing. He embodies the idea of a “social mandate”—the public role of the photographer. We see this, for example, in the series "Provincia Antiqua", which gathers images of archaeological sites in France: fragments of landscape that preserve the value of the past and perhaps evoke the memory of a certain beauty. A beauty that, as Aldo Rossi writes, “can emerge from the remnants of what we thought we knew.” And yet, there is more to Basilico. His is an approach dedicated to understanding—a slow reading of the underlying structure of the built narrative he observes. His gaze stretches perception to the point where architecture becomes a body, and its components, “personifications”—an organism that breathes and that today, perhaps, gasps under the strain of excessive spectacle and rapid upheaval. Basilico’s photographs call for a reconciliation with the world, through contemplation—a sensitive way of seeing. Photographs as places of encounter, “a renewed space where interior projects and the external appearance of the world might coincide.”
exhibition views
