Seen: Resonance
Who: Giovanni Pascarella / ジョバンニ パスカレッラ / tumblr
Where: Totem Pole Photo Gallery, Tokyo
When: August 29 - September 3, 2017 (open 12:00-19:00)
For his opening statement for his first solo exhibition, Giovanni chose a great quote from Blake Andrews:
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To wander for hours searching for the unknown requires faith. One must trust that unmarked time spent photographing will result in the world revealing itself, and that your translation of the world will be meaningful. That’s a tough mindset to maintain, because sometimes photos happen and sometimes they don’t.
- Blake Andrews
未知の何かを求め何時間も歩き回るという行為には、ある種の確信が必要である。撮影に費やす途方も無い時間を信じるものだけが、それ自体を表現する世界へと辿り着き、世界に対する解釈は意味を成す。それは忍耐と根気のいる作業である。時に写真は素晴らしいものを与えてくれるが、失敗に終わることもあるのだ。
- Blake Andrews
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Luckily, in Gio’s case, this photos indeed happened. The images aren’t simply pictures but actual real photographs. Sure, they’re shot on film (645 & 6x6) and the prints were handmade in a darkroom- but more importantly they’re photographs in the sense that the medium is inseparable from the subject. The pictures are snipped from reality, not ideas or expectations. They’re solutions to visual problems stated in that rich vein of twentieth-century Szarkowski-esque glory. They’re results of intelligence meeting curiosity combined with an itch to discover how photographs themselves work.
While every frame was exposed in Japan, the work is not at all about a foreigner’s eyes on this country. There are undoubtedly “Japanese” things seen- but the bigger picture is the nature of photography itself. There’s no attempt at explaining an overt society or culture- I think that this exhibition is an attempt for the photographer to explain an interest in the medium itself. An exhibition is one way to approach this- but I must add that Giovanni’s growing collection of vernacular photography that he’s kindly sharing on tumblr, is another.