There are few stories as fascinating as that of Pompeii. That city attached to Naples that was frozen in the 1st century AD under the lava of Vesuvius. Le Corbusier wrote about it that he saw a cathedral in the atrium of the House of the Silver Wedding, and Goethe compared his domus with little doll houses. The Italian photographer Luigi Spina (1966), passionate about archaeological beauty, the crevices of amphitheaters and classical sculpture, had privileged access to the site in the middle of the pandemic. He walked through the deserted streets, advancing with his Hasselblad along the worn paving of the Via Estabiana.
The result is this careful edition that includes 300 full color photographs organized by chapters following the neighborhoods of the ancient city. We look at wonders such as the gardens painted with leafy fruit trees, strawberry trees and oleanders of the Casa del Vergel; the Venus reclining on a shell in the room to which she gives her name or the intense sky blue of the Ancient Hunting House, an exceptional pigment – explained in the text – due to its high cost.
José Manuel Ballester: ‘Camino de Castillo de Davalillo Haro’, 2023
Jose Manuel Ballester (Madrid, 1960) travels the paths of the landscapes of Godofredo Ortega Muñoz (San Vicente de Alcántara, 1899 – Madrid, 1983) transforming his oil paintings into photographs. This change of register is not new for the National Photography Prize, which moves with ease in both techniques, resolving its pictorial doubts and insecurities with photography, writes Javier González de Durana in one of the texts.
In Thoughtful landscapes It extends the volcanic walls of Tenerife in the seventies to present-day Lanzarote, recreating itself in panoramic views of the vineyard fields that Muñoz loved so much, or in the olive groves of Jaén. And all this without abandoning his taste for restful and depopulated imagethe same one that he showed us a few months ago in his Of the Perennial Tree in PhotoEspaña.
David Jiménez: Photography from the ‘New York Memories’ series, 2023.
Image matching is one of the distinctive features of David Jimenez (Alcalá de Guadaira, 1970). We saw it clearly in the exhibition Universes (2019), in the Canal Isabel II Room, and returns to it in New York. Memories. Tour the American city to the rhythm of memories of Bob Colacellotaking black and white notes that play with the topics that we already know, and recognize – the subway, skyscrapers, Central Park… – in impeccable compositions.
In this sequenced reading, it combines the arrangement of the images on a double page and in pairs, creating subtle dialogues like that of a vertical figure next to a tower or the lines of a wall that have their replica in the undulations of the interior of the Guggenheim Museum. It is part of the collection Ivorypress Cities that connects a photographer and a writer. The one from the city of Madrid was signed by Jorge Carrión and Alberto García-Alix.
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2024-01-06 02:02:11
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