| TONY ATHERON
Tony Atheron, self-taught, began photographing at an early age after receiving the gift in his first camera. Become an expert photographer, black and white printing in the darkroom. There has recently been devoted to digital photography has always been run-nally lost all stages of the process, from capture to print. His main interest is in land-Sun, which interprets metaphorically interactions with humans and the changes in his land. His photographs have been published in architectural magazines to national newspapers. He has participated in various group exhibitions.
MEMORIES HELLENIC
Water is one of the glories Sila: everywhere in fresh rivulets flowing among the pebbles and flows down the slope to join the larger streams that go to the coastal lands, desolate and unhealthy Magna Graecia ... One of the major rivers is the Neto, the classic sung Nehaithos by Theocritus, which flows into the sea north of Croton: S. John overlooking its waters and furious with the help of a little imagination you can follow the entire course from the top of Comb Dark.
Norman Douglas, 1915
With these words at the beginning of last century Scottish traveler Norman Douglas had described one of the fundamental characteristics of the territory silane, the abundance of water and at the same time nel descrivere il corso del fiume Neto parla di “acque furibonde”, di quelle stesse acque che portano energia, vita, mistero e sono state per i greci vie d’accesso in un territorio incognito, ancora vergine. Proprio a quei pionieri provenienti dall’“Ellade luminosa”, di cui restano scarse vestigia nelle sepolture rinvenute nella valle del Neto, rende idealmente omaggio il lavoro di Tony Atheron, ispirandosi a coloro che non si sono lasciati spaventare dall’ignoto, da quanto avrebbero trovato una volta risalito il fiume. Percorrendo a ritroso l’antica migrazione, a partire dalle sorgenti e scendendo fino al mare, il fotografo evoca la leggenda delle donne troiane, prigioniere degli Achei, che stanche di wandering set fire to the ships to put an end to the trip and fuel the imagination, revealing views and glimpses of intense poetry. The work of unwinds Atheron so in a memory location in which makes it a patina of ancient and far more nuanced. In flowing water, in glimpses of the landscapes through which the river flows through Neto inaccessible places or rolling plains, then find the roots of a people, perhaps of all peoples. Water is the primary element, not surprisingly, the photographer uses the technique of "selective focus", but the scenery that surrounds it shows signs of human passage. The ferns, primitive plants, it seems here to represent the sense of continuity, of history. Following the path through images full of bold and exciting prospects in the present time we find a constant in the history of Sila, the trunks of trees cut. I am a particularly eloquent, evoke the despoliation of forests, their use since ancient times for the timber and pitch, the precious lifeblood of silanes where pine trees were amazing. A thin red line leads inevitably to more recent history that saw the destruction of forests during the last war. Behind law, however, this picture is another story, that of man, his relationship with the forest, with vegetation, with the tree by counting the territory and the man who withdraws land for cultivation, the possibilities of survival. Yet they are still, the trees and the river, the protagonists of the landscape, now that the culture changes quickly in the opposite direction, where synergy between man and environment is a priority. For this reason, the work of Tony Atheron appears to be a compendium of intense lyrical story of a civilization: here the man does not appear but leaves its indelible traces despite the firm resolve of nature to reclaim the territory, as he had already stressed ' Humanist John Pontano, using "renews the spontaneous erased the ravages of the jungle and hid human affairs addensatesi on forest thousands of years." PAOLA Binante
Binante Paola was born in Rome, lives and works in Bologna. Professional photographer and photography teacher at the University of ISIA (Higher Institute for Artistic Industries) in Urbino. Since 1984, deals with art photography, from 2000 he began his artistic research that develops in two directions: an experimental and conceptual. He has exhibited in Italy and abroad at major solo and group exhibitions including: the XIV Quadrennial in Rome, 2004, International Photography Festival of Rome (various issues), "Smack" Brewery Project Los Angeles, USA, 2005; " Nature and Metamorphosis, Shanghai and Beijing, 2006; "Homage to Mark White" In Camera Gallery, Monaco Monte Carlo, 2008; "Ordinary China", Galleria Anna D'Ascanio, Rome, 2008, "Experimenta-Collection Youth Ministry, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome (2008.2010) ; Fotofestival Lucca, Lucca, 2010. His photographs and his lyrics can be found in prestigious art catalogs.
GOLD OF BANDITS
Culture is a structure of meanings transmitted historically embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge and attitudes to life
Clifford Geertz, 1997
Discover a land through its material evidence is the commitment of Paola Binante who for years worked as a photographer and artist in search of those tracks that link the past to the present. Choosing "everyday objects, participating in the daily lives of most people" not only emphasizes the functional value, but also the "shared symbolic meaning." In this work on Sila chose the title "The Gold of the robbers" from a suggestion, literary, historical, and why not, to investigate a legendary nature, for the inhabitants of the Sila was the mother and stepmother same time. La Sila, with its forests has accepted these beings came into myth and they are hiding in the recesses of the most inaccessible, but sometimes has betrayed them returning it to a world ruled by those abuses to which the majority was trying to escape. Just in these lives fleeing the story acknowledges the authors of settlements and villages sprung up in remote areas of the Sila difficult for the weather and road conditions. Yet, those people have been able to face a hostile territory, making it fruitful, gathering wild fruits, working with perseverance and commitment to survival. The testimony of this is still before our eyes, is the interaction between man and nature, his wit, the same "industry" that passed the abused myth of the "noble savage", admired and remembered in the writings of foreign travelers to Calabria and Silas. The reading of a place "through the story of its origins ideal transposed to the newspaper" is, in the work of Paola Binante, the common thread that binds the country Longobucco (CS), in the northern part of the Sila Grande, Sersale (CZ) , the beginning of the park south of the Sila Piccola. This is what the photographer points out, the need to preserve the memory of what now seems obvious, to those objects which are often found in contact, and it turns out the way just in the halls of museums Demoethnoanthropological. For this reason, the research that underlies the initial phase of its project has a key role. Becomes a kind of circumstantial paradigm through the identification of known elements and at the same time unknown to most of the intrinsic values \u200b\u200bthey bring. Thus, for example, faces in stone and the apotropaic forms included in the walls of an ancient palace of the imagination Binante Longobucco recall the robbers, but not only these decorations also evoke the ancient art of stone carving. Here then, is right there, under the eyes of all, the gold of the robbers: the hidden treasure that is believed to be somewhere is the human capacity to turn things around us, of creare oggetti d’uso comune, di saper utilizzare i prodotti del bosco, come i funghi e le castagne, della pastorizia, creando il “delicato formaggio” di cui già parlava Cassiodoro, e dell’agricoltura, come le patate, le olive o il pane. L’eco delle “bottegucce che espongono i loro prodotti in guisa di nature morte” di cui parla Piovene durante il suo viaggio in Italia nel 1957, nel lavoro di Paola Binante si trasfigura in concetto: l’idea di continuità tra passato e presente che sottende in questi luoghi ad ogni gesto e ad ogni attività quotidiana nel solco di una tradizione radicata. La fotografa rende esplicito questo concetto e va alla fonte, senza sentimentalismi, senza ovvietà, with rigor, creating sharp images, photographed on a neutral background like an old piece of linen. These shots to return objects and simple products, emblems of an inexhaustible vitality, an ideal location in a space-time data stream that has no time. Would themselves take on a value apotropaic that helps to avoid, at least in part, what the anthropologist Ernesto de Martino had called "cultural apocalypse."
FRANCESCO GRANULES
Frank Granelli was born and lives in Montevarchi (Arezzo). In the mid-seventies, the neighborhood is av-driven by the desire to photography to document their travels. In 1978 he took part in a seminar organized by Kodak with maestro Franco Fontana, from this experience comes a deep passion that gives life to a personal photographic research-oriented reportage and architectural photography. His work seems to confirm the idea that Proust "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." In his report portrays the metropolis, creating isolated geometries that play a sort of consolidation of space, not a picture of reality but a representation of reality. In 2005 he published the book "Images from the global village". Several participations in photographic events, including numerous solo exhibitions e collettive in Italia ed all’estero.
L’ORA DEL SONNO
La strada sale per trecento metri circa in un nastro serpeggiante di polvere bianca e il sonnolento procedere verso l’alto sotto l’azzurro incendiato di sole tra il canto delle cicale, sembrava eterno. Non si scorgeva anima viva; il silenzio era caduto sul mondo e il grande Pan regnava. Infine entrammo in un paesetto dove, ancora una volta trovammo una quiete mortale. Era l’ora del sonnellino pomeridiano.
Norman Douglas, 1915
Così l’autore di Old Calabria si esprime in occasione del suo arrivo a Spezzano. Il silenzio, lo stesso che si avverte in the forests and large expanses of snow, still pervades the countries portrayed in the photographs of Frank Granelli. Palaces, houses, views, balconies and windows, draw shapes that sometimes border on abstraction. The new and old coexist, the stone gives way to concrete, plaster, sometimes colored with bold colors and bright, seems to reaffirm that sense of ownership since ancient times to choose the color as a distinctive note of generating, in the words Piovene "Case festive that vary from place to place depending on the climate in different groupings of bright colors." Entering into the alleys and streets of these places show a common trait: a remote human presence, merely hinted at, which is can grasp just by looking at the door of the open window, the curtains or clothes hung ajar. It is the specter of abandoning the road and the few clues lead back to the times when the threshold, as the window between the inner and outer diaphragms were allowed to see without being seen. The idea of \u200b\u200bcountry as "the place where it unfolds plus the soothing power of the house, space in which man, as he explains Faeta, ripping a part of the unknown and known in transforming managed to" turn a threatening hostile space in and protected by a huge forum for the work of domestication, "here seems to give way to profound social change who see emigration as one of the most common answers to the uneasiness. Long gone are the days when foreign travelers did not fail to point out a poverty and a decline attributed to the continuous invasions from the nations of the Sila, and spent nearly half a century from the accurate reporting of socioeconomic Piovene on land reform after the war, in which he writes "It Silas sees today in the overlap with the old with the new release of a film photographed twice in different countries ...", are still being felt in the contradictions between the grinding crumbling courtyards and views of brightly painted buildings or again the echoes of that poverty. At one time the neglect was attributed, almost like a responsibility, a population is not accustomed to having something of their own to care for, "lacks the sense of home here as a reference point fixed and pre-existing topographic ..." Norman Douglas wrote in 1915, today the contradictions seem to belong to the delay of a political, social, economic and cultural. Yet the signs of change can be glimpsed in the restored buildings, for example: these are an attempt to return integrity and identity to places steeped in history and rich but difficult to manage as an expression, according Faeta, a high degree of "marginality, insecurity and fragmentation of the territory. " So you try to deal with the nomadic atavism to which they are burdened those "paesitti Ferrigni that seem to watch with watchful suspicion "described by Ulderico Tegan and perhaps that is why in the portraits of the village of Frank Granelli metaphysical atmosphere we breathe today, almost suspended.
ANTONIO MANTA Manta
Antonio was born in Empoli in 1966, lives and works in Pian di Sco (Arezzo). Professional photographer, is co-owner of "Alternative Graphics" and experienced image and digital fine art printing. He gives courses and workshops at national and European (Arles, Lyon, Paris) on the use of post production and digital printing Fine Art conducts research and dissemination Photo planning and taking care of exhibitions and publications. In March 2010 he was the organizer and the editor of the first edition of "Fabriano Photo Festival. His photographs have been published in magazines like "People Photography" and "Foto.it", and exhibition catalogs and books including: "Enfants du Togo", 2004, "Souls and Stone", 2005 "Children in Desert, 2006, "Against Uganda, 2007. Worked as a photojournalist in Morocco, Tunisia, Togo, Uganda, Laos, Israel, Cambodia, Vietnam and Armenia. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and his works are kept by Len Levine of New York and in private collections and Lyon Paris. NEW WORLD AND SINGULAR
The landscape of the Sila Grande truly deserves the adjective "great": the soft undulating ridges covered with thick pine forests and beech forests alternating valleys of Quaternary lake origin, in part filled with artificial lakes and prairies ... ... Maybe a few points in the Italian mountains offer such a spectacularly fast-changing nature and landscape.
Joseph Isnardi, 1927 Sila Discover through the eyes of Antonio Manta can be an adventure that goes beyond the aesthetic to lead us into a territory where feeling and emotion come together, there-lying mutually in a brief but intense period of time. No coincidence that the photographer chooses to use the Polaroid, which allows immediate development of the image. The complete mastery of technique, knowledge of mixing colors, and their mutations in the moments following the shot, it is permitted to intervene, even before the image is formed at all, with signs and engravings which is able to transfer and to set the emotions in front of these places. Go beyond the photograph through the gesture that takes on a cathartic is his intent. The eye is large, overall, only sometimes dwells on the details. The tangled woods of forests, rivers and large reservoirs, the vast and serene pastures already appreciated and remembered by the Latin poet Virgil, the cultivated landscapes through the seasons, they become a sort of canvas, a medium on which immediate action whenever, in any new circumstances, with a different feeling. This gesture takes the form of a graphic that has a matrix simultaneously archaic and contemporary, well summarizes how to perceive themselves in a territory that has deep scars of the past. This kind of incision is the reference point for further processing of the image that often, even in homage to the figure of Nino Migliori, choose to use your gold fund in order to bring out the sign. The result is an amazing job for the great pictorial sensibility. Thanks to the special shots you do not lose the sense of depth, one gets the impression of observing the paintings of those Italian masters in the second half of the nineteenth century gave impetus to the revolutionary discovery of the shy and together compendiario sign and light. The landscapes of extraordinary beauty of the images are alive in the Sila Antonio Manta confirming the impression that once belonged to Pio-veins, "that allows the Sila organized human life by balancing it in agriculture, forest, pasture."
These shots show us not only the image but, more importantly, quella stratificazione sensoriale che il fotografo attraverso un procedimento complesso e con un intenso coinvolgimento ha voluto catturare PAOLO PAGNI
Paolo Pagni è nato a Montevarchi (Arezzo) nel 1953. Ha iniziato a interessarsi alla fotografia in giovane età, sulle orme del padre, fotoamatore evoluto, dal quale ha appreso i primi rudimenti di tecnica fotografica e di sviluppo del BW in camera oscura. Ha successivamente avuto modo di do- cumentare con i suoi scatti i numerosi viaggi che ha effettuato in giro per il mondo. La sua attività fotografica ha di recente avuto un nuovo impulso in virtù dell’adozione della fotografia digitale e della Polaroid, cui si dedica dal 2003 with the intent to capture and convey the image of the sensations aroused by contact with people and environments. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in several Italian cities, including Catania, Terranova Bracciolini, Florence. A FANTASY MADE WITH THE NORTH SOUTH RIGOGLIOSI
Sila is a paradox landscape, and brings us back to some surreal compositions, which get their fascination with each other by combining heterogeneous objects and disambientati. It seems to have fallen in a corner of Scandinavia, with more pine silanes 'tall and more' slender firs ... In fact the morphology of the peculiar mor-Sila, combined with his main ornament - coniferous forests and especially those of Corsican Pine - makes this a solid place in the context of all the original of the Mediterranean region.
Piovene Guido, 1963 The experimental research and analytical quality that characterize the work of Paolo Pagni seems to be in perfect harmony with the idea of \u200b\u200bheterogeneous and disambientato, referred Guido Piovene. Albeit from an overview in fact his photographic project focuses on detail, mostly natural, that becomes the subject of selective attention. The Polaroids, like Manta Antonio, is the medium that allows easier to make visible an idea, or to capture a feeling during construction. The reality photographed, in fact, seems to play a secondary role, shapes and colors emerge powerfully, the procedure and the possibility of timely verification of an idea have the upper hand. The starting image gradually loses its sharpness to undergo various types of manipulation: it is sometimes a kind of stroke, a more subtle scratch, while others overlap or blur. If the most recognizable images in the sign similar to a stroke does not alter the original form but it creates a dichotomy of perception, they attest, however, the intention of the photographer to affix its signature staff, as a sort of signature that makes a tangible and unique sensation experienced in the face of a natural spectacle. He can also set the overall impression is summarized in the type of intervention that chooses from time to time, creating an album of personal memories are not tied to a static, but an image that, thanks to the proceedings which has been submitted, it becomes sole repository of this fragment of memory. In observing these polaroids you start a perceptual mechanism that sometimes leads to complete, sometimes proceeds by subtraction, and others creates spatial and temporal orientation. In each case the viewer is led to interpret trying to guess which act as idea, as the subject is at the root of photography. This is especially looking at those jobs that turn in the abstract, in which the color and the sign shall prevail. Sometimes the gesture is disruptive, overpowers the image up to deny it, other times, however, the photographer seems to want to lick the surface gently, blending colors and creating tonal relationships. Although the aim of painting is not declared, you can see in these pictures an ideal relationship with the figurative tradition of informal, sometimes surreal takes on the traits of the particular strains in scelti.Niente more than what nature does in Silas might say, all depends on the disposition to perceive the world around us differently, to capture the masses of color, vertical and horizontal lines with the light create imaginative plots, or maybe the tracks left by the man up a tree, to take advantage for example, to focus on a task such as that relating to the extraction of pitch pines that belongs to history. PETER VALLONE
Peter Vallone was born in the heart of the Sila Celico where he lives and works. Naturalist by profession for 90 years, combines his love of nature with a passion for photography. The deep respect we have for environment captures in his photographs is that of a language distinguished by simple and refined. The same sensibility that allows him to enter into a deep relationship with the vast spaces that likes to portray is found in more intimate shots in which she plays the plant and animal life. His photographs are in numerous publications of the Parco della Sila.
A SENSE OF BENIGN MYSTERY
reigns pine silane, free tree whose seeds take root, even if carried by the wind ... it forms cathedrals regular and thick tree trunks that extend for several kilometers sometimes enveloping the peaks, and thus filling the secret places of Sila.
Guido Piovene, 1957 These are the secret places mentioned by Guido Piovene during his trip to Italy in 1957 which is the guardian of Peter Vallone. Naturalist and photographer who works for the State Forestry Department at the Park Board, is the one who led with passion and professionalism to the group of photographers in the most isolated of the Sila. His images, which captures the great variety of landscape silane, are the result of a thorough knowledge of the area from which extraordinarily intense intimacy. His photos, although of great aesthetic quality, not to be regarded as mere documentation, but as the result of a feeling that reveals harmony and sensitivity towards the world around him. If the flow of the seasons with the metamorphosis of the most fascinating is the common thread of these images, each hides within it the ability to reveal hidden aspects that belong to places inaccessible to most. The photographer seems to embody the history of the relationship of the Dweller of Silas with nature since ancient times. It is his eye that captures in complete solitude and returns the staggering vastness of space, which allowed people to perceive images through its silence and sense of isolation that you can try again in those places. Yet as a modern and sensitive interpreter is not overwhelmed by a sense of sublime but wonder captures, both in large landscapes in which the gaze is lost in both views, a confidence, a familiarity that seems to invite discovery, to penetrate following the advice of those who know this country still has many secrets to reveal and as yet Piovene wrote: "For those who stopped there it takes in the highest areas in Serbia mysteries wooded and lake that the passing travelers are forced to ignore." So these images can be read under the double aspect of a perception personal and intimate but may at the same time, become a guide sentimental, with vivid color trails, with the expanses of untouched snow, with the transparency of the water flowing and with the heat that seems emanare un campo di grano assolato. Confermeranno, per chi si immerge in questi luoghi scoprendone la verità, che questi scenari quasi irreali non sono poi così diversi da quelle “giungle meridionali piene di luminosa bellezza, i loro punti più oscuri essendo rallegrati da un senso di benigno mistero”, di cui parlava Norman Douglas al principio del secolo scorso. |
Atheron 
