Museum of Rome in Trastevere, the exhibition "The faces, the stones, the city: Mario Carbone, Emilio Gentilini 1952-1985" has been extended which brings together over 100 photographs from the collection of the Museum of Rome in Trastevere and from the private collection of the Carbone archive, which will remain open until 13 October 2013.
The intent is to enhance and make visible to the public part of the immense photographic collection of the Trastevere museum which also makes use of important photographic funds. Some of the images on display, taken between 1952 and 1985, have never been exhibited to the public. There are many affinities between the two authors, such as the rigorous choice of black and white and the dwelling on the expressive faces of the people. On the other hand, the poetics and the themes covered by the photographs are different.
Mario Carbone's images are distinguished by a realistic poetics who documents cultured places and individuals with clear coherence both in the snapshots that portray street vendors and workers in the districts of the popular city, and in those that document the streets of art or fashion (Via Margutta, Via Veneto, Piazza del Popolo). Carbone's gaze becomes more anthropological in the photographs that portray the faithful visiting St. Peter's with the priest acting as guide or the devout kneeling tourists in their extravagant clothes. The women and men portrayed in the semi-darkness of the taverns (see the famous image Osteria del Vero Albano) are instead pervaded by a vein of poignant melancholy. The images of Rome from the XNUMXs and XNUMXs instead give more space to social issues: political demonstrations and protests, the "poor" scene and the bare walls of cellars and garages adapted to stages where Carbone portrays the unrepeatable adventure of Roman avant-garde theatres.
Emilio Gentilini limits his investigation to images, in the seventies of the last century; in particular in the popular district of Trastevere. Places and characters express vitality and energy: squares and streets are cluttered with people and their often poor "tools of the trade". The city is still experienced in the common participation of daily and festive spaces and rituals. Gentilini observes and portrays, with irony and personal lightness, a Rome intent and busy in multiple activities, characters grappling with jobs resulting from an often wholly Roman creativity, permanent and itinerant jobs (the historic shops, but also the improvised sales of foodstuffs in front of the doorstep, collecting cartons, etc.).
Many images dedicated to sociability and religion (baptism, marriage, processions). Uses and customs born of need and extemporaneous inventiveness, such as to transform necessity into true popular aesthetics (the decoration of balconies and window sills, the method of hanging clothes at the windows, the basin for washing clothes which becomes a warmer) . And again, leisure and free time lived outside the home where streets, sidewalks and courtyards become a lived-in and participated area for dancing the saltarello, playing "zecchinetta" and having a chat with the neighbour. So the two authors give us back through these images a precious heritage of generous and vital humanity that blends with the very history of the city they inhabit.
And it's Renato Nicolini, in the introductory text of the 2006 catalog dedicated to Gentilini, to highlight the value of these photographic images as a "cultural asset", capable of capturing the changes of time and urban spaces, which now, once again on display, restore meaning and identity to the permanent collections and to the museum spaces themselves: "The places of Roesler Franz must give way to the faces of individuals, to the sudden and burning epiphanies that they suggest, without any rule that can lead to the broader perspective of the genre picture. The genius loci narrows its field of action in the transition from the painter to the photographer…After looking at these photos for a long time, I asked myself what is the real cultural asset? The stones or the inhabitants? I both answered myself. Therefore, the true cultural good is the urban landscape, the analogue, in the cities, of the landscape outside the city. But how is it possible to preserve something ephemeral like a lifestyle, the eyes through which a population looks at the world, thus inventing tradition? The Museum of Rome in Trastevere, which is finding its characteristic in photography, is the most suitable tool for questioning this topic. Not all transformations are created equal; and the city's museums, this new type of public space, are the appropriate institutions to question oneself on the subject and, at least, experience the transformation with awareness”.
The exhibition The faces, the stones, the city is promoted by the Department of Cultural Policies and the Historic Center - Capitoline Superintendency, curated by Silvana Bonfili and Donatella Occhiuzzi with the organization of Zètema Progetto Cultura.
Museum of Rome in Trastevere Museum of Rome in Trastevere Piazza S. Egidio, 1B. Tel. 060608 (every day from 9.00 to 21.00)
www.museodiromainttrastevere.it
