Radici d'acqua
Of our five photographers, Teodoro Lupo is closest to the tradition mentioned above of idea of landscape as an analytical investigation of a territory. His critical reflections on the Mission DATAR, with which he is very familiar, as well as with the work of Italian landscape artists who have frequently worked in this geographical area, have been Lupo’s guide in combining theory with his reconnaissance of the territory. His method, in which lengthy observation extracts few essentials fragments with enormous selectivity, is a reminder of that «patient seeing»* which Paolo Costantini attributed to Guido Guidi, who is - not by chance - one of his certain influences. The concreteness of his photography is based on showing uninvasive water works, secondary waterways, marginal details which capture our gaze and conceal the sophisticated formal structure of the image, a visual architecture bound to the human landscape. By focussing our attention on elements which we instinctually reject as typical of landscape art, Teodoro Lupo invites us to reflect, before making any judgement, on the actual landscape we have constructed and experience, and on how everything, from the infrastructure of the civilising process to minor interventions in the natural world and the smallest everyday gestures, contribute to transforming the manifestations of water and its environment.
*P. Costantini, Percepire le differenze, in «Fotologia» 5, estate-autunno 1986, p.80
Extract from Daniele De Luigi’s Territory, water: A project on roots and placet, in «Radici d’acqua», Italia Nostra, Reggio Emilia, 2005, pp. 13-15
Of our five photographers, Teodoro Lupo is closest to the tradition mentioned above of idea of landscape as an analytical investigation of a territory. His critical reflections on the Mission DATAR, with which he is very familiar, as well as with the work of Italian landscape artists who have frequently worked in this geographical area, have been Lupo’s guide in combining theory with his reconnaissance of the territory. His method, in which lengthy observation extracts few essentials fragments with enormous selectivity, is a reminder of that «patient seeing»* which Paolo Costantini attributed to Guido Guidi, who is - not by chance - one of his certain influences. The concreteness of his photography is based on showing uninvasive water works, secondary waterways, marginal details which capture our gaze and conceal the sophisticated formal structure of the image, a visual architecture bound to the human landscape. By focussing our attention on elements which we instinctually reject as typical of landscape art, Teodoro Lupo invites us to reflect, before making any judgement, on the actual landscape we have constructed and experience, and on how everything, from the infrastructure of the civilising process to minor interventions in the natural world and the smallest everyday gestures, contribute to transforming the manifestations of water and its environment.
*P. Costantini, Percepire le differenze, in «Fotologia» 5, estate-autunno 1986, p.80
Extract from Daniele De Luigi’s Territory, water: A project on roots and placet, in «Radici d’acqua», Italia Nostra, Reggio Emilia, 2005, pp. 13-15
