Still life - angel with flowers 1
Still Life is the name I chose for this series of photographs that I have been making for a while during my visits to small graveyards in little towns in the North of Italy.
In these places, my attention is drawn by the micro “scenographies” created by those who revere the memory of their departed ones - who were often born and died in the 19th century – and, curiously, ornament those small scenographic spaces with pictures of the departed person, vases, flowers, lamps, talismans, little relics…
It is clear that the choice for the name Still Life is intended to create ambiguity in the definition of its meaning and, especially, doubts regarding the nature which the name refers to, that is: the biological nature of the human represented there by his remains or the nature of the flowers placed by the graves, possibly arranged according to traditional pictorial compositions.
My look as a beholder of these scenarios leads me to an ambivalent perception since, while the inscriptions with the name and age of the departed reveal a funereal aspect that evokes feelings of sadness, the arrangements with flowers reveal a proximity with a conservative aesthetics (romantic, kitsch?) that attempts to evoke feelings of “beauty” and feelings that something good still remains within ourselves, the living ones.
And it is these images combining these two apparently antagonistic “ingredients” that lead me to try to create an almost documental art, with no interference from the photographer seduced by the wealth of human expression that can be found in his own social-historical setting.
Dante Velloni
dantevelloni@gmail.com
Dante Velloni, Brazil