Connections #2 - Walk around Milano by Sandro Iovine

i© Fulvio Bortolozzo.

«I learn to watch. I do not know why but everything penetrates deeper in me and it does not stay where it always had. I have recesses in me that I used to ignore. Now everything ends up there. I do know what is happening to you»

Rainer Maria Rilke*

Project managing a photographic work relies on infinite variables. One of these is the maniacal cartographic planning which is one of the most common approaches among landscape experts and professionals. However this is not the only approach that can be taken. There is in fact who gets inspired by the walks of the French intellectuals in the 19^th century; as explained by Fulvio Bortolozzo: «The concept of walk around, i.e. wandering around without a definite destination or intention, has its origin in the walks of the Parisians flâneur, which then became Dadaists, Surrealists and Situationists. It is an undetermined method of working that I think more suitable for crossing and observing the man made spaces of the contemporary urbanisation».
The sought-after randomness of photographic encounters with the city evokes in our minds and by association, the punk poetic praised by Rebecca Solnit. In fact, she states that despite the planner's will, cities are the product of the subconscious. Hence, despite the will to bring them to a conscious state, they would inevitably fall into the subconscious and only this way they would be inhabited. (1)
The random encounters between the author and the city resemble an unpredictable chain of revelations that follow one another in a rather accidental way. As Fulvio Bortolozzo says, «The operational procedure expects pictures to be taken following the standards of the restitution of perspective and not for them to be planned or prepared. They just happen while moving for work or for personal reasons».

Effectively, authors introduce some rules that intervene in a deterministic way in this zero degree ostentation of the photographic approach. The very same choice of following the standard of perspective restitution, or even the declared lack of planning, imposes a common line along which the work develops. As stated by Fulvio Bortolozzo, if it is true that «in this way it is not possible to preset a contingent logic concatenation between the images which is left open to every chance of random encounter and further development» it is undeniable that the concept is not very different from the idea of dwelling intended as «direct communication between the cities’ subconscious and the inhabitants’ subconscious». (2)

[ Sandro Iovine ]

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(*) - Free translation from Reiner Maria Rilke, I quaderni di Malte Laurids Brigge, Adelphi, Milan, 2001; p. 11.
(1) - cfr. Rebecca Solnit, A Field Giudeto Getting Lost, Viking, New York, 2005.
(2) - Free translation from Franco La Cecla, Contro l'architettura, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2008; p. 22.

i© Fulvio Bortolozzo.

i© Fulvio Bortolozzo. v BEHIND THE SHUTTER CLICK
with Fulvio Bortolozzo

Fulvio Bortolozzo tells FPmag how the work Walk around Milano was born and has developed, and offers us an interesting opening on his way of working on the field.

Fulvio Bortolozzo - He was born in Turin in 1957, where he currently lives and works. In 1980, he graduates in set design from the Accedemia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin's academy of fine arts. He uses the camera as an observation tool. He exhibits his pictures in Italy and abroad. Since 1998, he is a professor at the IED (Institute of European Design) in Turin. Between 2008 and 2014 he writes his observations on photography and its surroundings on the blog Camera Doppia. Between 2009 and 2011, he creates the cultural project Osservatorio Gualino, in occasion of which he curates and organises the competitive exhibition Lens Based Art Show (2010). In 2013, he opens a Facebook group called We Do the Rest. In 2014, he curates the editorial and photographic project Questo Paese and opens a personal blog, Fulvio Bortolozzo. He is also actively involved in didactic and cultural activities in the context of visual arts.

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