The first time I visited the Bagni di Craveggia, on a scouting trip with the gallerist Flavia Zanetti, the publisher Jean Olaniszyn and fellow photographer Stefano Spinelli, I was immediately struck by the distinctive rust colour visible in varying degrees on the surfaces of many of the stones and pebbles in the bed of the River Isorno. I picked up a handsome stone a little longer than a handspan and took it home. I imagined that the colour—caused, I assume, by the iron content of the water—was permanent. To my disappointment, however, after a while—I cannot remember whether it was days, weeks or months—that beautiful reddish stone, with its somewhat squared shape, a sort of softened, rounded parallelepiped, became dark and colourless. The areas where the colour had been most intense became darker still: they were covered in an opaque layer of grey. I kept the stone nonetheless. I like it this way too, in its new and apparently more stable form. Looking at it always reminds me of the atmosphere and colours of the Bagni. Above all, it recalls the thunderous sound—monotonous, but not for that reason boring—of water flowing ceaselessly among the stones and pebbles.
I am fascinated by the contrast between the stillness of stone and the flow of water. Yet the stone’s stillness is only apparent. Stone, too, is transformed and changes. It is eroded by water, shaped by its unceasing flow. Like everything in the world, stone is constantly changing, although to us it appears fixed and motionless. Now, as I write, the rock, stones and pebbles photographed at Ponte Oscuro and the Bagni di Craveggia continue to change. And when visitors look at the images exhibited in the gallery, the stone will still be undergoing its unstoppable transformation.
Milan, June 2008
