exhibitions

European Photography 2010: Enchantment
Enchantment to us is the approach path, the actual direction, of an eye that is still fascinated without being seduced; a marvelling, positive eye, whose view is projected forward; an eye that knows how to look differently at what is standing before it and to see the Other that is there; an eye that does not allow itself to be dragged backwards by excessive nostalgia, yet does not get stuck in analysis and  mirroring the present, but searches the image for signs of transformation and change.
We talk a great deal about imagination; we fantasize, we nurture expectations and desires, but we have completely abandoned all form of reflection on the imagination.
The photographic image is a powerful tool for this kind of reflection because it conveys not only the experience of what it fixes, but also the view of the eye that fell on the image, the thought that wished to convey that view or wished to disperse it in that simple fragment of reality. If we leave the documentary as well as the symbolic aspect to one side, every image still retains something else of itself which we could define as a metaphorical aspect. But a metaphor of what? Of what each person might want and suggest, but, first and foremost, a metaphor of life. That is why when images move us, when they draw us near to what they ask of us, it is because we are looking at them with enchanted eyes.  
What really interests us about photography is its peculiar ability to show us things differently from the way we are convinced we are seeing them, their giving substance to views that become different or which discover the way they always have been, but unbeknown to themselves. It is the presence of the viewing eye, and of the mind behind the eye and behind the camera. It is “thinking by images”, it is the reverse side of the “optical unconscious”, it is the propositional power of sensibility.
What changes does the image see and foreshadow? What metaphors does it foresee? What meaning for life?