contessanally: September 2015

Venice: Tre Oci – Through Women’s Eyes – From Diane Arbus to Letizia Battaglia Exhibition - opening and dinner. In the fascinating space of the Casa dei Tre Oci on the other side of the Guidecca Canal the exhbition Sguardo di Donna (Through Women’s Eyes) – da Diane Arbus a Letizia Battaglia - La Passione e il Coraggio, until December 8, the exhihibiton is curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti. The work of twenty-five photographers has been chosen to direct the viewer’s gaze and mind onto a world of diversity, responsibility, compassion, and justice. Through Women’s Eyes is a powerful exhibition that speaks about the care lavished on relationships, about our relationship with the other, and about ways of gazing on and observing the world, and where the premise is an innate sense of responsibility. It is also an ambitious project, underlining as it does how over the last few decades photography has opted to become a sort of world conscience, often also depicting that which has been concealed. The catalogue is published by Marsilio Editori.

Above. The exhibition’s layout was created by fashion designer and artist Antonio Marras. The installation is in itself an experience within the experience of the exhibition, a fundamental element in the narrative, creating a relationship between the venue’s spaces and the photographic works. Costumes from La Fenice take center stage on the ground floor on the wall a photograph by Letizia Battaglia – A Woman Weeping Over Her Poverty – San Vito Lo Capo – 1980.

http://www.treoci.org/

http://www.marsilioeditori.it/

Photograph Courtesy M. and E. Woerdehoff von Graffenried, Paris – copyright The Estate of Diane Arbus LLC

Diane Arbus - Girl in Her Circus Costume, MD - 1970

“A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know”

Diane Arbus

Antonio Marras, Emanuela Bassetti and Cesare de Michelis

Sguardo di Donna – Da Dianne Arbus a Letizia Battaglia – La Passione e il Coraggio. Antonio Marras designed the exhibition’s layout in such a way as to transport the viewer into the very heart of the stories that can be read along the walls.

Alessandra Sanguinetti – La Pareja from the series Sweet Expectations 1992

“Children are fascinating. We were all children once, and most of who we are was defined in our childhood. As a society, we project so much of our hopes, frustrations, denials, and aspirations on children, and they are so transparent in how they reflect everything that is thrust upon them. How could I not photograph them?”

Alessandra Sanguinetti

Sguardo di Donna – Da Dianne Arbus a Letizia Battaglia – La Passione e il Coraggio. A woman is by definition a loving being, capable of “totally giving spirit and body” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science) with unconditional devotion. This is why the curator Francesca Alfano Miglietti, above, has chosen female artists or authors who use photography as a means of expressing themselves and all women the world over. They are all finely attuned to perceiving the same humanity, uniqueness, and in-difference in the infinite variety of subjects they portray; their aim is to eschew the fear of diversity. Through Women’s Eyes is also a polyphonic tale of the manifold forms of the body—physical, mythical, spiritual, and glorious—with a dual value: intimate and universal, it sets out on a search for existence, beyond the anonymous system of the mask. Each work provokes profound and intimate dialogue between the subjects of the photographs and the viewer, relating an indefinite glimpse of our common human condition, an “invitation to become aware” of the existence of different worlds that are often completely extraneous from one another.

Phoptograph courtesy Tre Oci

Bettina Rheims – Gender Studies - 2011

“Thirty years ago, when I wanted to become a photographer, I went around with my camera and shot what happened around me. Then I wanted to see women undressing. People think I undress women. It’s not true—I undress their thoughts”

Bettina Rheims

Sguardo di Donna – Da Dianne Arbus a Letizia Battaglia – La Passione e il Coraggio. Antonio Marras designed the installation it in such a way as to transport the viewer into the very heart of the stories that can be read along the walls. He is photogrpahed between the crates in which the costumes from La Fenice arrived, creating a long passageway into which he hung photographs.

Above. Giorgia Fiorio – Lager Obukhovo – San Pietroburgo – 1994.

Donna Ferrato – Living with the Enemy – 1986.

Ziva Kraus and Denis Curti

Paolo Bazzani co-designed the exhibition installation

Yael Bartana – The Missing Negatives of the Sonnenfeld Collection

2008

Yelena Yemchuk – Odessa#7 – from the series Untitled Project

2003

Lilli Doriguzzi

Elena Fieni, Sonia Veroni, Patrizia Marras, Diana Veroni and Maria Luisa Frisa

Sergio Castellitto

Photogrpah copyright Lisetta Carmi – courtesy Tre Oci

Lisetta Carmi – Erza Pound – Sant’Ambrogio di Rapallo 1966

“A photograph has never existed in my head before shooting it: I see what’s there, I vibrate with what’s there, I love what’s there, I am excited by seeing what’s there”

Lisetta Carmi

Cristiana Costanzo

Chiara Bertola and Silvia Burini

Yoko Ono – Bed-in For Peace – 1969

“The story of my life is the story of the world. I always make sure that what I put into my artis the truth. And the truth is only that of my own experience”

Yoko Ono

Cesare Fullone and Francesca Alfano Miglietti

The Marras Family – Efisio, Antonio, Patrizia and Leo

Sam Taylor-Johnson – Soliloquy VII – 1999

“I use photography as punctuation to mark the fundamental chapters of life. My work comes from this feeling of mental and spiritual freedom”

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Maria Luisa Frisa and Mario Lupano

Giorgia Fiorio - Legione Straniera, 3°REI, Guyana Francese - 1995

Photography doesn’t answer, it asks, and everyone interprets the question according to their own viewpoint and sensibility. It is not mimesis, it does not (re)produce nor explain reality, it indicates — sheds light on— something that the fractured composite of the real does not reveal”

Giorgia Fiorio

Giorgia Fiorio and Esther Woerdehoff

The View

Catherine Opie - Bo – 1994

Catherine Opie – Ron Athey – 1994

“If there’s something I’m not, it’s one-dimensional. Which is why, instead of focusing on queer subjects, I tried to expand it into a queer message”

Catherine Opie

Mark Edward Smith

Paul Loyrette

Canale della Giudecca - La Salute – San Marco

The Dinner

Sguardo di Donna – Da Dianne Arbus a Letizia Battaglia – La Passione e il Coraggio

The dinner for the photographic exhbition, at the Casa dei Tre Oci, Sguardo di Donna – Da Dianne Arbus a Letizia Battaglia – La Passione e il Coraggio, was held in the book wall-lined house and the garden of the Marisilio Editore publisher, who produced the catalogue, Cesare de Michelis and Emanuela Bassetti.

Hostess Emanuela Bassetti

Luca Campigotto, Italo Zannier, Renato Quaglia and Luisa Menazzi Moretti

Alberto and Maria Bovo