It is important to observe immediately how these photographs introduce something simple and clear. The author, Alessandro Vicario, concentrates his attention on the people who pass in front of the sections of the Berlin Wall that are still standing, basing his photographs on the contrast between the movement of the human figures and the clarity with which the remains of the Wall are recorded. In the codes of photography, movement typically indicates anything that is transitory, mobile and perishable: in this case the human lives that transit in front of the remains of the Wall. Fixedness and clarity, conversely, indicate something that is stable, definable (but not necessarily, because everything habitually appears clear in photography and not only the things we consider to be most stable): in our case, the sections of the Wall, which are charged with becoming a monument.
After the fall, the remnants of the Wall, youthful archaeological remains of twentieth-century European history, constitute important signs, albeit now reabsorbed in the overall perception of the renewed city. They tell a broken story about something that no longer exists, fulfilling the function of a monument or archaeological remains (we must always remember that our entire knowledge and idea of history and culture, which we construct over time, consist only of fragments). But the segments of the Wall we see in Vicario’s photographs are also a backdrop in the theatre of daily life. People pass by, like life goes by. The author has insistently, almost obsessively taken up these transiting figures, realising a vast series of works. It seems evident that the sense of the research lies precisely in this serial and repetitive nature: the author is not interested in this or that person, in fact, nor in the “speciality” of an existence gleaned from the fleeting moment of a gesture, in a detail of movement, but the almost mechanical repetitiveness of changing lives, in front of what remains of the Wall. Bodies become ghosts, matter is transformed into shapeless aerial (or deformed) masses, transparent blotches, which entertain a dialogue with the blotches on the Wall. The lives, in fact, are all the same when it comes to history – always ready to change from a concrete physical nature to an undetermined, fragile state. Vicario’s images thus take on a hypnotic aspect, they sound like an insistent litany, responding to a symbolic type of visual ritual.
But another trait unexpectedly and clearly emerges: colour, a theme the author has been working on for some time. Although his work rotates around the hard theme of existences passing on the stage of history, colour restores a playful sense of life and, in close collaboration with movement, defines abstract forms, backgrounds and imaginary patterns. Colour, however, also reveals another meaning: the author’s restlessness, his desire for vitality and expressiveness, so to speak.
In fact, as confirmation of this and in another direction, we observe that he does not limit himself to close-up shots that bring out the abstract and imaginary portion of the work better, but he moves around the subject he has chosen in several ways. For example, he also works with wider shots, where more complex scenes can be related and a form of narration can be sought, with the presence of a greater number of people. This is a second level of Vicario’s work, which in a certain sense is measured with the ancient image of the Wall, the image of the colourful graffiti we know so well, which also shows, in a certain sense, the urban texture, the street – the city, so to speak.
This second more narrative level is also present in some images, which are different, that depict vertical struts of the Wall – clear, strong signs that seem to resist the vegetation that is attempting to reclaim them. So this is another, more residual and marginal vision of the city.
This is also present in a series of previous photographs from six years earlier, dated September 2003. They show the rust-coloured panes of glass of the Palast der Republik, seat of the Parliament of the former DDR; they reflect fragmented images of the main Cathedral and passers-by proceed along the sidewalks. The shots are fixed and the only elements that change are the passers-by. It is a brief series of works, which once again bring out the fleeting image of passing people.
Following a previous research entitled Die Berliner Mauer, which is referred to here with several images, all of which are dedicated to the physical, material nature of the Berlin Wall, almost as if it were a memorandum. In this recent work, Vicario repeatedly speaks of the people, he seeks contemporary history through human presence. But how can you relate the story of the man of today, in this case European man, but in a wider sense, the man of the globalised world? How can you investigate the enormous transformations taking place in human lives, in culture and in human behaviour? Definitely not through news reports, not recording special “moments” or events, not depicting extraordinary situations in the social context, nor through skilful “snapshots”.
This is perhaps the deepest sense of the choice of movement, the element that dominates these images: it indicates the indeterminate and complex nature of the present, the impossibility of defining, of foreseeing, or seeing clearly. The figures of the present are not immobile. They change, are transformed continually and strike a precarious balance between a past that becomes increasingly difficult to conserve a memory of and a future that is unpredictable and indeterminate for us, which we don’t know how to imagine. Such is the destiny of the figures in the present.
Vicario’s movement is not the experimental movement of Étienne-Jules Marey or Anton Giulio Bragaglia: it is instead a problematic movement, despite the vivacity of the colour that often, as we were saying, goes with it and almost rivals it. It is an existential, psychological and sociological type of movement. It expresses a tremor, a form of instability more than of dynamic tension; it indicates contemporary man’s attempt to come into contact with the world in which he lives, to understand whether it is the places that change more quickly, or his life.
Milan, 28 July 2010
