Olivo Barbieri

The volume brings together for the first time the photographs taken by Olivo Barbieri (Carpi, Modena, 1954) in the early eighties. In these shots, full of mystery and everyday life, can be found all the elements that in the following decades the Emilian master would have developed: the artificial lighting in contemporary cities, views from above, home interiors and bars, the signs left by man in the landscape. In consonance with the spirit of research that characterised the season of Italian photography between the late seventies and the early eighties, Barbieri scoured with a sharp and meticulous gaze the hidden corners of the province – authentic places of the indefinite – with the intent to investigate the theme of visual perception and its representation. His images scratch the surface of a banal only apparently so and, in a state of expectation and disorientation, open up a new way of looking at space, instilling a doubt in the observer: do we actually see reality? The volume includes a critical text by Corrado Benigni and a conversation with the artist. Text in English and Italian.