DOLOMITES - N46 36 47 E12 9 47

Inkjet prints, 140cm x 105cm, edition of 10

Dolomites
from UNESCO - The World Heritage List
 
"The site of the Dolomites comprises a mountain range in the northern Italian Alps, numbering 18 peaks which rise to above 3,000 metres and cover 141,903 ha. It features some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes anywhere, with vertical walls, sheer cliffs and a high density of narrow, deep and long valleys. A serial property of nine areas that present a diversity of spectacular landscapes of international significance for geomorphology marked by steeples, pinnacles and rock walls, the site also contains glacial landforms and karst systems. It is characterized by dynamic processes with frequent landslides, floods and avalanches. The property also features one of the best examples of the preservation of Mesozoic carbonate platform systems, with fossil records.

The nine components of The Dolomites World Heritage property protect a series of highly distinctive mountain landscapes that are of exceptional natural beauty. Their dramatic vertical and pale coloured peaks in a variety of distinctive sculptural forms is extraordinary in a global context. This property also contains an internationally important combination of earth science values. The quantity and concentration of highly varied limestone formations is extraordinary in a global context, whilst the superbly exposed geology provides an insight into the recovery of marine life in the Triassic period, after the greatest extinction event recorded in the history of life on Earth. The sublime, monumental and colourful landscapes of the Dolomites have also long attracted hosts of travellers and a history of scientific and artistic interpretations of its values."

"ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN"

I would like to introduce this new series of photos by Andrea Alessio dedicated to the Dolomites by appealing to axiom that photography is a philosophical practice. His exercise allows us competing critically with the exotic, or with what exists outside us. It is not only a technical ability, but also a thought instrument that we can apply to the reality and to our reflection training-ground. Consequently, the true discovery is not in the visible imagination we create, but in what it reveals to us of our mind.

The journey begun during the recent years by Andrea Alessio through his own “where”, coinciding approximately with that geographic region called Veneto, satisfies first of all this need to realize, to direct the mind in such a way to perceive better what is important for us. In this sense the journey is a re-birth path that can just start nearby, from what we do not see or we do not want to see anymore. In this sense, Andrea Alessio’s choice to start the re-discovery of his own ‘territory’ through the Christmas decorations and their unsuspectable shining a light in the dark of the most common places is brilliant. His patient night visions derive from this need to shine a light on his own experiences.

The following stages of this journey lead us from the Venetian plain with its factories and scattered houses, to the most solitary mountain landscapes, in which the relationship between solids and voids, between what is and what is not, is sharper and more marked in the photography, also for the use of black and white. In the infinite snows of Misurina, collected in the ‘Apollo 19’ album, in which Andrea Alessio sketches the features of a Martian space deceiving the reason by widening the borders; then in the ‘Vajont’, where he tries his “reconstruction”, by investigating not so much for the remains of the memory as the sensations before time, before that dramatic moment, October 9th, 1963, at 10.39 PM, sweeping away almost 2,000 people during the sleep.
The photographer reminds us for a moment, that the mountain, a symbol of union between sky and earth, does not always aid the awareness by the human being of his position in the universe.

Finally the Dolomites. The story highlights another basic element of the poetic view by Andrea Alessio. The distance or what I would call more philosophically the right measure. It becomes the interpretation necessary to open the project and to explain the relationship with the context. The author looks for an optimal scale to bring the mountain closer to its possible dimensions. Somehow, you perceive the desire to hide any reference from the observer. The message is clear: the mountain does not exist, just what we are able to grasp of it exists. Of course, the façade of the Dolomite peaks is hard, compact and impenetrable. This rock is so much that it seems to us that we may have it between the teeth and chew it. However, sooner or later, the details appear on the surface. A fir challenging the high altitude, a pole driven in the stone, a child climbing on his hands. Suddenly this uniform mass starts slowly to distinguish itself, to reveal its life, as if it were a projection of our same existence. As we gain confidence, it seems to us almost that we may own it. So, it can even happen that we joke by mistaking the face of one of these Dolomites for the profile of Garibaldi, Verdi or Karl Marx. This is of little importance. What is important is the effort taking us there.

In all these works you breathe a great ground silence, necessary to think and to obtain suggestions from the inner whispers. It seems to me that Andrea Alessio has stopped to pursue the past. All his meetings with his “where” gives shape to a new personal interpretation. Light, space and time are words that the author makes vibrate to call the definition into question and to look for a meaning out of the pure objectivity.
Now there is nothing we can do but wait for his descent from the mountain towards the sea.

Steve Bisson
Asolo, October 13, 2014