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Photography has always been considered – a new way of seeing, and therefore conceiving reality – often unconsciously influencing our ways through its derivatives: cinema, television, internet, mobile phones; in this context, Lorenzo Gatto offers us his personal vision of the world.

His photographic images, often in black and white, monochromatic, elegantly connect with etchings that predate the miraculous 1904 invention by the Lumière brothers, offering a link between the daguerreotype and new digital techniques. More than any other, his shots reveal an almost tactile and loving relationship between the photographer and the subject, filtering signs and meanings in an action that culminates in the orgasm of the click. Lorenzo Gatto manages to gift us the concept of beauty as seen by the classics, varying and resolving aesthetic and typological canons in a modern key.

Obsessed with his city, Palermo, which he loves immensely, he turns it into an open-air studio, creating semantic contrasts by combining decay with excellence. This happens clearly and sincerely by using the physical beauty of movement, favoring subjects from the world of dance with their clean and linear forms, contrasting them with completely abandoned environments of his city, noble palaces and ancient ruins that once were scenes of excessive splendor and now live in oblivion, losing their presence in the memory of the people.

Despite this provocation, and in some cases, we might say social commitment, aimed at making the ruins of history perceived as “beautiful,” although not a novelty, it finds its reasons in the intolerance for traditional objects and the consequent search for new themes outside canonical styles. For these reasons, his shots forcefully recall art history which, like painting or sculpture, tends to idealize the body, making it the undisputed vehicle of beauty. Without the aid of eros, it becomes the sole protagonist capable of changing composition in total harmony.

Lorenzo Gatto’s work completely annuls the discoveries of William Henry Fox Talbot, because instead of enabling the printing of an indefinite number of positives from a negative, it gives the impression that his works are unique pieces that cannot be reproduced in series, paying homage to photography by granting it that privilege of uniqueness which was once reserved only for the major arts.

Work exhibited at MacS:
"Essence and Appearance" year 2016 – size 100x150 cm – model dancer Valeria Zampardi – edition 1/2 – digital photography
The work is part of a photographic project started in 2016 and completed in February 2017 with an exhibition presented at the BOBEZ gallery in Palermo,
and replicated at the GADAM Gallery of the municipality of San Marco d’Alunzio (ME).