© archive manunzio


The earth and the fog merge into a single dense matter, erasing the boundary between ground and sky. In this shot, the eye does not look for prey but recognizes a disappearance. Those moving on the left are not hunters, but walking souls—presences slowly dissolving into a white emulsion that welcomes and forgets everything.

The tree on the right remains as the last scar of a solid world, a twisted silhouette still resisting erasure. There is no trickery, no light to be cut with cardboard: there is only the frontal rendering of a lens that accepts drowning in the infinite refraction of dampness.

The analog grain gives a tactile substance to this void, turning the emptiness into a find. Nothing is being chased here; one simply inhabits the edge of the visible, letting the white become the only true protagonist of the story.

First — literary reading

It’s a place that offers no resistance: the landscape doesn’t say no, it simply stops responding.
Snow flattens everything, fog erases distance, the horizon withdraws like a sentence left unfinished. There is no drama, no gesture — only suspension.

Within this near-total quiet appears an alien sign, rigid and vertical.
The pole is thin, the sign is small, yet it holds the only remaining word. It doesn’t point, it doesn’t warn: it records an absence.

The land seems to have lost its memory of itself.
It isn’t desolate — it’s inaccessible. Like a page that still exists but no longer returns its text.

Second — metaphor

It works because a digital code is transplanted into the physical world without translation.
“404” isn’t explained, isn’t softened: it remains a cold, bureaucratic marker — and that is precisely its strength.

The metaphor isn’t technological.
It’s existential.

Searching and not finding

Moving forward and receiving no reply

Being in the right place, but at the wrong moment for meaning

The landscape isn’t broken; it’s out of service.
And the sign doesn’t announce a failure of the world, but a failure of our expectation — the belief that something must answer us.

If it resonates, it’s because it doesn’t explain.
It simply states.


Ps. Ipse dixit (said...from ChatGPT)

© archive manunzio


A message in bottle, again

At that time, the valley meandered like the course of the river, and the only living creatures were the farmers who tended the vines, the vegetable gardens, and the fruit trees. The silence was one with the rays of the sun, the heat of the season, the chirping of cicadas and singing crickets. Today the valley, with the river harnessed by reinforced concrete embankments, is lined with supermarkets. And silence reigns supreme like a shroud of Death.

In Media Res

Hi Artisans photo-printermaker where to start if not, for example, Fabriano and its albums (from latin word albo, white) already at used my home since the days of elementary school?
Fabriano paper, let's go and the n. 4 already in use years ago when I make the experiments in Print-Era inkjet and between profilers and calibrated monitor (then thrown in the trash see bellow link) like a trapeze artist, between gamma 1.8 Mac and 2.2 Windows colorimetric theories Relative Perceptual and ... black dot. A casino royal! At this days ten years have passed, I've just started printing on paper again, a quantum leap in inkjet technology and fairly easy operation. Today, softwares facilitate the final printing on papers with related ICC profiles, or a "translator" between what the monitor sees and the drops of CYMK on the final paper. Closed parenthesis, the Fabriano n. 4 and black and white printing on Canon Pixima Pro 200, and its free proprietary software "Professional Print & Layout" in code PP&L: obviously nothing prohibits, indeed, to print from Pshop, Lightroom and others software. However the software PP&L is a fantastic and discreet ecosystem, we will talk about it in a next thanks to exhaustive video find on Youtube.
Be that as it may, the print test is n.2 A4 Fabriano sheets with its 200 sgm (there's a trick to very end weighing it down more, gluing two sheets in one!) doesn't make you cry out for a miracle, sure, also because I used the "auto-pilot" within the Canon software, just to start from a point. Another mess? No, not at all, as everything beyond the data, let's say purely technical, is worth the personal eye and the taste and one's own vision of the world*, a far cry from the simple, sad and lonely binary code on the monitor, which cannot show the real range of the paper (this is true for every brand) Fabriano 4, its honest gray range** even if in color as we will see later, and here we give it as a premise: chapeau!
On the other hand, another Fabriano, the Rosaspina, which does not need any presentation as it is well known by the masters who use it for drawings and wet techniques, 220 sgm, with a velvety and pleasant touch, transmits an excellent vibration and a nice sound***. And if as happened by mistake to print from the back, you find yourself a surface let's say textured similar to canvas for artists!
And it must be said even if it puts fearful experimenters on the run: the Rosaspina Fabriano "drinks" and absorbs ink like a sponge (which all porous surfaces of other brands do) so that with the Canon Pixima 200 you have to find the mix, let's say, of "inking" in view of the fact that, lacking the layer of barium sulfate or other the surface, and this again applies to all papers produced by third parties, on the Rosaspina the inks tend to sink (spread) between the fibers. Translated: a patina that mixes everything and questionable contrast. And yet, never say never, because there is a way to curb all this and it has the wet mark 609, but we will talk about this "numerology" again.
That's all folks? None because on stage it is another Fabriano Artistico paper that makes the a big difference: here things get interesting, indeed in contradiction with what has just been said. Artistic in the natural white and extra version that we have tested. Artistico Extra White 300 gsm paper that does not seem to be made for "artists" by the wet brush in all its facets. First of all the tactile sensation, which is hardly found in the blasé papers for inkjet, that is pleasant smooth. But if you keep on feeling the paper, it is made of a completely different material: cotton fiber. Now, if the tactile sensation is a good start, the results are amazing, thanks to the fact that the treated surface prevents the dye inks from sinking like the Titanic into the fibers paper. And this translates into sharpness of the edges, contrast and anything else worthy of papers for inkjet: very fine.
The blacks, I'm talking about test black and white prints, here are deep and not as unsteady n. 4, as well as the tonal range as well: it's a pity that the monitor flattens everything and you can't see the difference. Artistico Fabriano it well bears the "underexposure" or the well-known exposure latitude of certain analogue materials aka silver halide. Not enough? In fact Innova in joint venture with Fabriano (we have written and had feedback about it) calls its "special" papers (rough watercolour surface) Artistico and they cost a fortune: à la page c'est vrai?
We have reached the end of the first part with the Fabriano Papers in black and white test, next products of other papers mill, and to follow the more than good results obtained for the color test images. Stay tuned paisà because we are only at the beginning of the fireworks and of a bet already won: the use of art paper (not conventional) on printers Canon Pixma Pro 200. A la prochaine fois paisà

*The human eye sees reality humanly, with all its load of emotions, ideas, preconceptions, culture. In the memory of things there is always a dominant color, the others disappear. From book "Fare un film" Einaudi Editore
**To bring out the typical black of glossy paper shine, the spreading of wax on the print was experimented with good results. Wax already used at the beginning of the twentieth century by Stieglitz, Steichen Ansel Adams and others

***All papers have a "sound" a vibrations, in fact as a pinch your thumb and index finger and swinging the (all factory papers) paper you hear a low sound slightly gloomy but harmonic as when in good weather season a summer storm is approaching

Link
Gallery Fabriano
Tips for better prints
Innova inkjet papers

Ps1.Fedrigoni-Fabriano and others trademarks, in this and all posts, no pay me for advertising
Ps2. A papers selection I purchased to local fine arts supplier, online for Artistico Fabriano and other paper manufacturers

Abstract
a day in season of Christmas two young people at my door ask me if I want nuts

Bussano alla porta nel periodo natalizio. E d’abitudine apro ritrovandomi davanti due ragazzi. Quello che mi è davanti è il più spavaldo mentre l’altro già guadagna la scalinata ché ne ha udite di “risposte”. Quanti attimi passano non saprei, forse il solito scherzo della mente, tuttavia è mio l’imbarazzo - da giovane si era in un’altra dimensione spazio-tempo vendevo libri per la Mondadori sbarcando il lunario, così negli anni Settanta del secolo detto breve – conosco bene, intendo dire un diniego o una porta che chiude neanche il tempo di aprir bocca…Vendiamo noci, ossia nulla (un’altra volta una giovane voce di donna al citofono mi chiedeva se ero interessato a dell’olio) così l’altro giorno un pensiero che ti passa davanti come nuvole di Primavera mentre stai camminando e pensi a cose vaghe. Buona fortuna ragazzi

Man