​ARTE POVERA / FOTO POVERA



 

My work is also inspired by Arte Povera. In 1967 Germano Celant published in Flash Art his Manifesto of ​Arte Povera, Notes for a Guerilla. Celant studied history of art with Eugenio Battisti at the University of Genoa, Italy.  Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether art as the private expression of the individual still had an ethical reason to exist.  In 1967 and 1968 Celant organized two exhibitions, followed by an influential book published by Electa in 1985 called Arte Povera Storie e protagonisti/Arte Povera. Histories and Protagonists, promoting the notion of a revolutionary art, free of convention, the power of structure, and the market place. This resulted into a group of Italian artists who attacked the corporate mentality and consumerism with an art of unconventional materials and style. They often used found objects in their works. Some artists are Michelangelo Pistoletto,Jannis Kounellis, Giovanni Anselmo, Luciano Fabro, Gilberto Zorio, Mario Merz, working with basic elements like  sand, soil, wood, iron, jute, tar, worn clothings. During the Eighties the term Foto Povera emerged. The means of taking pictures became 'poor': use of disposable cameras, lomography, joy cameras, "flopped photos", etc.  A complete refusal of the striving for  perfect photos and  perfect gear, but still experimenting to go beyond the limits of current photography, like did A.Rotchenko and L.Moholy-Nagy before World War II. And after the war experiments with Polaroids (R.Frank). In  France Foto Povera started in 2005 under inspiration of Yannick Vigouroux. Actually the artists use smartphones, pinhole cameras, Holga and home made cameras.

I experiment with pinhole and infrared photography, but the main portion of my work  is with traditional gear and it is more the point of view that approaches the philosophy of Arte Povera. Registering those specific moments where you  see the phenomenons in their original state of being, unspoiled nature.