A genius — un genio
This is the work of an Italian photographer who calls himself “Aged Senator.” I asked and received permission to use this photograph to headline this post.
This man has been taking photographs since the 1950s. His early photographs are a stunning black and white record of a world that is gone and that I am sad not to see. Some of the work is on camera oscura which is so demanding that in school I accomplished one shot which I had to do to pass and then walked away forever. It requires lenses arranged so that you can see or shoot something not really visible to you. His are masterpieces. His portraits stun with their reach into the portrayed.
As his work moves into color you find that he not only is a great composer, but great at seeing the chromatic detail that tells Italy’s story. I want to go everywhere he shows.
I can’t spend a lot of time looking at his photos at one time, because they overwhelm me. There’s a physical sensation of being filled up so that I can’t breathe. I want to know his people, see his places, I want to be there at once and I am greedy for all the feelings he evokes. Go forewarned that you may also feel helplessly involved in his world.
I can’t even remember how I found his pages, but I am so satisfied that I did. It is a museum of images past and present that paint the Italy that invaded me in 1973 irrevocably and made me come here to live. All of Italy is not beautiful, but all of the Aged Senator’s Italy is charged with an energy and a searching quality that will make you overlook what she’s got wrong. Because you can see that she’s got it mostly right.
8 comments May 26th, 2007
