Alessandro Vicario. Shadows on the Wall. Figures Passing in Front of the Berlin Wall

In 2009, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the photographer Alessandro Vicario, born in 1968, presented an exhibition, Die Berliner Mauer*, the result of sustained research into this historic and unintended monument to the division of peoples and the collapse of a totalitarian system. The photographer’s undertaking on that occasion was consistent with his established stylistic approach: using a large-format camera to obtain maximum sharpness, he photographed fragments of what remains of the wall, which were then presented in the exhibition as 1:1 enlargements, visually restoring the wall to its actual dimensions. Visitors, particularly those who had never been to Berlin, found themselves before remnants of a historic structure reproduced with the greatest fidelity to reality, significant even in its “ugliness”. The photographed sections of wall are indeed eroded by time, sometimes pierced with holes and with steel reinforcement protruding from the concrete. Where the designs of colourful murals emerge, they are now faded, flaking and fragmented, to the point of appearing truly archaeological. Yet in certain details of Vicario’s works, the almost scientific analytical intent sometimes shifts unpredictably from extreme realism towards an almost abstract or Art Informel inflection that recalls the visual explorations of the 1950s.

Rigorous and meticulous, Vicario did not consider that work complete. In the same year, 2009, he continued his research, adopting a further conceptual and practical approach that produced the new work Along the Wall. Berlin 2009, presented at Fondazione Mudima in Milan.

Although the main subject remains the Berlin Wall, this more recent investigation introduces many new elements: the photographer varies and broadens his view, adopting a more flexible choice of framing, whereas the earlier work was characterised by its focus on the fragment; he extends the periods of shooting to obtain different kinds of light that bear witness to the passage of time before the subject; and, above all, he introduces a fundamental new element in the content: human figures crossing the space between his lens and the sections of wall within the frame. These people were photographed with relatively long exposures so that they appear blurred, in clear contrast to the immobility of the material in the background. This stylistic and conceptual choice yields two results. Formally, the analytical and descriptive treatment of the Wall remains, but it is no longer the sole protagonist: alongside it comes the visual “disturbance” created by the fleeting shadows of passers-by. Conceptually, the introduction of these precarious presences invites questions not only about the materiality of the structure, which, as noted, is a highly symbolic witness to history, but about the very meaning of human presence in the world and in history. Using motion blur to convey visually and immediately the precariousness of human existence is a practice with deep roots in the history of photography, employed by many artists. Vicario arrived at it by following his own consistent deductive path, starting from his earlier analytical experience without disavowing it, and reaching a more complex visual experience in which the analysis of matter and the symbolic force of precariousness find a synthesis through motion blur, used not as a formal device but as a conceptual necessity.

The message conveyed by these images is undoubtedly a reflection on the meaning of history and of human presence within it: the matter of the wall, a solid structure that time nevertheless unravels, and the matter of which human beings are made, still more precarious yet seemingly seeking redemption through the movement that animates the scene. In this respect, the artist’s decision frequently to use sequences is significant: the photographs unfold through temporal variations—the same framing at different moments, and therefore with different figures passing through it. The artist also presents a parallel video installation, entitled Raw sequence, showing all the photographs he took, rather than only those selected for the exhibition. The images run in a loop at very high speed, accompanied by the obsessive rhythm of techno music by Berlin’s Paul Kalkbrenner. Does everything flow?