I‘m delighted to have the opportunity to introduce this exhibition by the Italian photographer Vasco Ascolini. Throughout his long career he has had vast numbers of exhibitions and publications and is the winner of various awards including in 2000 "Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres" from the French Ministry of Culture. In January 2007 he will be celebrated with an exhibition in his home town of Reggio Emilia.
The photographs in this exhibition are from his brooding series Noir Lumière and reveal a dark world populated by symbolic representations of humanity. This is a world not of flesh but of marble and stone where the players are statues. The light and scenes are intertwined and sun beams enter this world as if they are moonlight - wary of being restrained on film. The forms are caught mid stride as if Medusa had just passed through a portrait studio. The settings for the shots are in museums, archaeological sites and gardens - places that reek of antiquity. Many photographers have recorded the cities and ruins of the ancient world - Francis Bedford, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Reverend Calvert Jones, Robert MacPherson, Philippos Margaritis, Eugene Piot, Giorgio Sommer and William J. Stillman to name just a few - but these images are not record shots but rather a state of mind about time and memory.
