Venice Inge Morath. Space and magic in photography

to Geneva Amadeo.

geographical Armand Fremont wrote inVingt ans d’espace vécu“that”The area is marked » Hidden, imperceptible, to interpretation that requires a process of ‘acclimation’, work to become aware of it It relates the subject to the object». of the values ​​intertwined with these signs «Literature and painting are mediators of exceptional wealth», and in the intermediate view, even through the eyes of the “foreigner”, the fusion takes place between geography and feeling, between the concepts of space and the city and the feeling of human emotion.

From this perspective, the gun Angie Morath (Grätz 1923 – New York 2002) is a concentration of moods and flavors and lands poached from the sea and seem immutable.Half fairy tale, half trapas described Thomas Manna city scene that deals with the contradictions of time, which is the same and last. exhibition in Grimani Palace (“Inji Morath. Photography from Venice in”, edited by Brigitte Blum and Kurt Kindl) He then positioned himself as a double observatory for pictorial art and the spirit of a symbolic place for human geography, an “emotional domain” he understands Yi Fu Tuanwith an unstable physiognomy, from time to time it can be redefined starting from oneself, from one’s state of mind.

Morath herself caught a glimpse of her—actually one of the infinite specters of light—in the fall of 1951, when she was with her first husband. Lionel Birch Using an old Contax machine, he photographed angles and passers-by Venice Out of the ordinary, wrapped in the hazy atmosphere of transit season, when splendor seems more discreet, peeps less crowded.

«The light was beautiful, and the rain covered everything like glass. I called Kapa and suggested he send someone to take pictures. Capa forcefully pointed out to me how impractical that idea was and said, “Why don’t you take a picture?” So I went to a store, bought a movie, and charged the car. The employee advised me not to take pictures in this weather. But I knew better: you can take pictures even in bad weather – it’s not for nothing that I watched them all do it at work. On the packaging of the film something was written about the cloudy sky: exposure time 1/50 at focal length 4. Then I look at the time, find the exact point of the first photo and wait for the right people to pass exactly in the right place. I was just starting to push the button, and I suddenly realized that this was the perfect way to express what was inside me».

This osmosis between the interior and the external environment, between feeling and a sense of place, in Morath’s view, is a stylistic and existential code, intended to translate into an urgency of voice that focuses on postures, movements, and faces. Like the photos taken forMagnum Agency (of which she was the first photojournalist), even the “moments” of Venice give us a tattered familiarity, thrust with appreciation from the daily rhythm of life, as if the camera were a glass and a probe at the same time, a tool for history and the breaking of mistrust.

Morath’s second stay in the City of Waters – when in 1955 Lille magazine commissioned her to write a report to illustrate “The Saved Gun – Watch the gunBy Mary McCarthy (1956) – it turns into an immersion in the spirit of the place, on a journey to the end of the myth, through spaces and glimpses that crystallize and kill them, the innocent and vulgar gestures of those who pass by. Calli and campielli, lace in the hands of Burano women, abandoned pair of shoes near the fountain.

Almost in contrast to McCarthy’s lucidity (who portrays Venetian society as a mixture of “Traders who only live for profit»), the artist casts his gaze between the breaks of “normal life”, so that in the faces of the carpenters and fishermen he lets a glimpse of a sweet sadness, and an immeasurable confidence, which is the same that dwells in the eyes of the carpenters and fishermen. Heinrich Bolll Pablo Picassol Anis Noun and other celebrities photographed throughout a career rooted in place and place.

After all, this is the essence of his photography, that ability to go beyond a mere subject looking for form to bring matter to life, to imagine and recapture that mix of anxieties and conflicts that make a face a world, a place of focus. of stories.

Featured image: Inge Morath, Self-portrait, Jerusalem, 1958 © Fotohof archive / Inge Morath / Magnum Photos (details)