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Franco Fontana, photographer. He’s dead.


And ninety-two years is a damn good run—a worldly one, for sure. Way back when, Fontana even drifted into these Land (Lucania South Italy) circles; as I recall, hordes of trigger-happy hacks (infuriated pixel-addicts trapped in their own onanistic loop) rushed to bow before the "colorist" Fontana. A man who left his mark across the World and many Galery, as pages of that d'antan monograph published by the then Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri: I Grandi Fotografi" inside it many images of Lucania. As "All Colors of Benetton" or American way of life we could and should remember it. So a disempowered reality, an hyper-colorist image born of fantasies or mink coats—go figure. A fellow Romagnolo, Fontana finds himself his countryman Luigi Ghirri, who has also been underground for quite some time......continue
“The connection and parallel paths during the 1970s of these two Emilians (Ghirri from Scandiano/Reggio Emilia, Fontana from Modena) radically changed the way the Italian landscape and reality were narrated. Franco Fontana established an international reputation thanks to a bold, saturated use of color, reducing the landscape to abstract geometries, flat color blocks, and stark chromatic contrasts. Luigi Ghirri founded a new concept of the Italian landscape based on a conceptual, ironic, and melancholic exploration of everyday life, the provinces, and the signs of representation (maps, postcards, cinema). Despite their stylistic differences—Fontana’s geometric and chromatic abstraction versus Ghirri’s open, conceptual inquiry—their paths frequently crossed. Notable, for instance, was their shared bond with the Emilian cultural scene and even the early support given to Fontana’s work by publishing houses tied to Ghirri. Both remain fundamental points of reference for understanding the evolution of contemporary photography. A reflection on Franco Fontana’s artistic journey and his relationship with Italian landscape photography”—thus rambles the internet, that Great Box. Again Fontana wrote: "My research operation consists of isolating, in space and time, what is normally lost and blended within the infinity of details... the subjects I photograph are merely the pretext... the fascination of the image lies in the violence that created it, a violence necessary to shake off the habits that blind our gaze. We are the carriers and witnesses of the only possible meaning... objectivity is always destined to slip away from us..." — Page 7 of the referenced Fabbri monograph. Ipse dixit, and poorly so, it goes without saying. First off, with this Renaissance-derived egotism—man as the measure of All Things—sure, but with reservations aplenty. And that pleonastic "we" is even worse: pro domo sua rhetoric, straight out of Roman arrogance, Marchese del Grillo style: "...we are us, and you lot aren't shit..." Look at the ravages of Photography for those who chase after the marvels of pixels and increasingly "penetrating" sensors—one has to ask: what kind of backside do you have if the tool is about to pop right out of your mouth? Quarrymen, men who followed boss-men or got two for the price of one... let us speak no more of them and move on to what truly matters to us. So goes the so-called World: you pay the toll like Faust to Mephistopheles. De gustibus.




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