Well-known landscapes, but also views with no past, ennobled by the new photographical interpretation. One more time, it is not about geographical characteristics or giving a caption, it is the pending time of photography and its possibility of interpreting reality that represent an elegant transcription of a huge variety of places. The actors of Cosmo Laera travel from North to South, from East to West, they cross the hours and observe, loyal presences that the photographer is able to guide as a proper director, they underline where do we have to direct our glance to. It is a declaration of intent, explicit and direct.
With cross references we observe the observer and the pleasure of contemplation redouble: a mutual exchange of attention to the landscape that now looks at the observer making us becoming voluntary witnesses of interconnecting tensions.
Cosmo Laera’s photography use a dry, respectful language that alters delicately the colour shades in order to give a univocal vision of something different in time and place. The tiny presences involved in bigger landscapes are at the same time cameos and protagonists, they draw the author’s intention of inviting us to look, to make us become, watching to his works, “professional” observers of what surrounds us. The journey has to be taken slowly, from one picture to the other, through a vision that leaves aestethycal juggling apart and has a few hi-angle shots. Embracing the invitation in a note of reflexion of Italo Calvino: “Take life with lightness, with lightness that is not levity but is like planing on thing from the top, without having any burden on the earth”.
Cosmo Laera (Alberobello, Italy) started his career in his homeland, where he developed projects as curator of exhibitions and international festivals. At the same time he continued his photographic research increasingly focused on the relationship between vision and territory. His works are exhibited in galleries and institutions in Italy and abroad. He is professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan.
until January 9, 2016
Cosmo Laera
Senza macigni sul cuore
curated by Giovanna Calvenzi
Galleria Monopoli
via Giovanni Ventura 6, Milano