The Invisible Visible
14.4 – 28.5.2023

Works of
Giancarlo Rado, Yaakov Israel, Melissa Carnemolla

Curated by
Steve Bisson

Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm

Lab27 inaugurates on April 14 at 9:00 PM the exhibition "L’invisibile visibile (The Invisible Visible)", featuring photographs by Giancarlo Rado, Melissa Carnemolla, and Yaakov Israel. The exhibition sparks a reflection on the possibilities of meaning in seeing. The invisible does not concern only what we fail—or sometimes choose not—to see around us, and which photography can help reveal; it can also relate to the very fabric of our actions, the reasons that are sometimes unknown or unspoken.
The essential is invisible to the eye because appearances can be deceiving, and reality can also be internal, rooted in emotions. Faces—human, animal, or objects—can assume different values and meanings, even when visually similar to everyone’s gaze. In this sense, the exhibition reveals three places, portions of cities, but also three stories of authors who have inhabited and experienced these fragments of urban fabric. Photography is often criticized for voraciously tearing pages from human stories, almost with cynical opportunism or a predatory disregard for the subjects it depicts. This is not the case with the works on display, which convey participation, urgency, and commitment.

Like Yaakov Israel’s two-decade-long documentary work on South West Jerusalem, the neighborhood where the photographer grew up alongside many young immigrants from other countries—Syria, Iran, Iraq. His parents came from South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). A handful of cardboard boxes, rather austere housing blocks, temporary solutions that ended up lasting generations. For a long time considered the “B-side” of Jerusalem, this area now faces speculative interest aimed at demolishing and rebuilding these neighborhoods. However, as often happens in processes of gentrification, it is the residents who pay the price, many of whom will no longer be able to afford the changes. A story that repeats itself in Israel as elsewhere.
Compared to other photographic narratives in which he examines his country’s identity and geography, this series is more intimate, vibrant, and in some ways nostalgic. Israel seems intent on preserving memory before it is swept away by the bulldozers of progress—the memory of a mixed community, which is also his and his family’s. Fragments of stories emerge in small details of everyday life, which the use of a large-format view camera manages to capture and preserve on its plates.

San Liberale seems like one of those post-war social housing projects, similar to many others of its era. A neighborhood of now “vintage” apartment blocks, whose streets are hardly worth walking through. Today, it is said, foreigners live here. And it is true—change is tangible here, even if not everyone welcomes it. What few know is that this area was originally built to provide housing for those displaced by the 1944 bombing of Treviso. It is also where generations of Treviso residents grew up, including Giancarlo Rado, a musician first and an attentive photographer second. One gets the impression that whether playing a Baroque guitar or using an old Hasselblad—“ancient instruments”—the same dedication flows through his hands, a passion that is both artisanal and, in a sense, rebellious.
The diary that Giancarlo Rado continues to write of San Liberale through his photographs is composed of countless portraits, faces, interiors, details, and everyday situations. Together, these images form a reading of “minor history”—the kind that does not make the news but unfolds before our eyes, always. And in this way, it concerns us more intimately than the stories that dominate the headlines. The exhibition intentionally presents only select glimpses of the neighborhood, quiet scenes that reveal the absence of people, almost giving form to invisibility, and inviting viewers to imagine the future of its inhabitants.

Melissa Carnemolla’s story takes root in her work as a set photographer on Michele Vannucci’s 2016 film "Il più grande sogno (The Greatest Dream)". The film tells the story of a forgotten area of Rome and of Mirko, the son of a convicted criminal, who, after eight years in prison, is 40 and determined to rebuild a life he has previously squandered. The story is true, and fiction blends with reality. Today, Mirko Frezza is a professional actor.
After the film, and at the invitation of the director himself, Melissa Carnemolla decided to remain in Rome and continue documenting these places in her own way. Out of this grew a more personal project, centered around her friendship with Noemi. The city becomes a backdrop confined to an equally real story. The photographs, therefore, appear as intimate rooms: a lunch in the kitchen, fires on a balcony, and even the wedding of which the Sicilian photographer is a witness through her lens. These are scenes filtered through everyday life in a Roman suburb, made visible by Carnemolla’s intention—signifiers, if you will, for the gaze that meets them in a conscious instant, aware that a life can contain many possibilities, as many as the choices of who we are, who we might become, or who we might have been.

The series is titled "Behind the Dream"—after the dream, when the lights go out, and life must continue.

exhibition views