Luciano Rigolini: An Other Image

The first complete monograph devoted to Luciano Rigolini's photography Alongside his work in cinema and documentary, Luciano Rigolini has also carried out intense and rigorous research in the field of photography. Between 1990 and 2002 he photographed the urban landscapes and architectural details of European and American cities. These black and white images are uniform in size (140 x 140 cm), and immediately reveal their aesthetic and conceptual roots in the historical avant-garde, especially constructivism and German objectivity. At the same time he began to collect vintage stereoscopic plates, nineteenth century photographic prints and anonymous amateur images dating from the eighties of last century. A synthesis of these elements gave rise to an exhibition entitled La forma dello sguardo held in Spring 2001 at the Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano; a substantial catalogue was also published. This was followed in 2008 by the exhibition Fotostiftung Schweiz di Winterthur “What you see”, which was centred around anonymous works by 107 amateur photographers. This new work focuses in particular on the relationship between photography, painting and the role played by digital technology. Among other things, it presents a wealth of hitherto unpublished large format works, a reinterpretation of anonymous photographs and documents uncovered in forgotten archives, at flea markets or purchased from antique dealers or on the Internet. These images, originally created with no artistic pretensions, restored or re-elaborated using specific digital processes and printed in large format, reveal surprising sculptural, pictorial and formal qualities.