Stefano Cerio

The work of Stefano Cerio fits into one of the most significant and distinctive areas in Italian photography, namely, which, beginning with the exhibition Viaggio in Italia1 (Journey through Italy) curated in 1984 by Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Leone and Enzo Velati, has marked a radical change in the way of looking at our country. With complete nonchalance, Cerio asserts photographys ability to render manifest the invisible, what is usually hidden from the eye. Not, as the modernist tradition embodied by the new vision would have it, by exploiting the particolar characteristics of the camera, nor, according to the lesson of photo journalism, by showing a surprising aspect of daily life, but by searching those parts of the world that only a specific and determinate photographic intentionality can bring to light. [...] The estranged visionariness of these photographs also stems from this element, from the recognition of the appeal of the machine, even the most trivial and banal. The paradox is that this appeal can only appear at the moment in which their functionality is denied, in which form is detached from function and in which the machine becomes an exhibit rather than a tool.