Bruno Cattani with “The Memory Box” at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa

What is a Memory Box? It is a place to fix places, faces, bodies and feelings firmly in the memory, assimilate them and preserve them all forever in this imaginary and mysterious box. One can grant all these things their original shape and presence just by opening this box, an arcane mystery that stimulates the sense of awareness.
Photography is the magnificent accomplice of this Memory Box; right at the instant that the shutter clicks we have immortalised a fragment of our life.
Sandro Parmiggiani writes,” It can certainly never be overlooked that photography in that moment aspires to steal away a fragment of life and reality from the unstoppable rushing of time, in all reality the image is hardened like a bone and given to us, an irreplaceable splinter of time.”
It is clear with this photographic research that Bruno Cattani started some years ago based on his memories of his city of birth, Reggio Emilia, and then through the various thoroughfares of his life, that he wanted to achieve more than provide just memories. He hones in on the fragments, places, corners and streets that he has inhabited and moved around in his life with effortless mastery of photographic techniques, consummate sensitivity and mellow colours. He drifts around the games and toys of his childhood, his tricycle, table football, merry-go-round, the circus, Sundays in the park or summers at the seaside, football games and then school trips to museums.
He takes us right inside the misty landscapes of the Po valley, to the see-saws and swings and lonely, abandoned benches in the playgrounds, the cosiness of a bedroom and then to places seemingly stripped bare of any signs of the people who once lived there. He provides a feedback of the tensions and contradictions of our religion: crucifixes in the churches and vestries that might be abandoned, or placed above pin-up calendars in barbers’ shops. He prowls around crumbling ruins or the vacuous rooms of destitute buildings of an old psychiatric hospital, or the decrepit factories of Reggio.
By opening his Memory Box, Bruno Cattani allows us to open ours too and to browse through history through the filter of our memory. More than the forty pictures on show are the fruit of a ten-year long project, a trip through places that feature in our memory, places that we always carry inside ourselves. A trip down memory lane that thrives once again in the present time, where our personal and collective memories blend together giving us back the past experiences of our lives.

Sandro Parmiggiani goes on, “ ..taking photographs, we may add, is not a process of randomly grabbing a piece of reality that is identical to a presumed reality, but knowing how to give it back by means of a sort of transfiguration. It has much to do with the essence of something that is found in relation to the world itself and with a sentiment of a glance…This is the photography that stays, that which does not fear being held up against forms of artistic expression of much longer and solid traditions. This is the photography that is able to feed back to us and preserve over time the heartbeats of life and moments that are no longer there, via a fragment of reality.

As part of the Exhibition, the 2014 edition of the volume “Memories” edited by Danilo Montanari Editore will be made available.

Technical details

The first pictures for this project were taken using Polaroid Polarcolor 669 film, a self-developing system. After dispensing with this instant action film by the Polaroid Company in 2008, Cattani decided to continue with his project using a digital camera and in certain cases Photoshop. All of the photographs were printed on Canson Fine Art paper and then mounted on dibond with frames.

Biography

Bruno Cattani lives and works in Reggio Emilia. He took up photography in 1982 and has been a journalistic photographer since 1988. In 1996 he took part in a photographic investigation into the museums in Reggio Emilia and this hallmarked his study into places of artistic value. Over the years he has received numerous assignments in the field of photographic research for museums such as the Musée Rodin, il Musée du Louvre, l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, l’Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, the Pergamon museum of Berlin and the Soprintendenza Archeologica of Pompei. In 2000 he was present at the D’après l’Antique exhibition at the Louvre Museum and, in the same year, his exhibition “L’arte dei luoghi” (The Art of Places) was included in the programme of Mois de la Photo in Paris. “Figure Nel Tempo” (Figures in Time) is the title of his solo exhibition that has been open since 2002 in the Galleria Civica of Modena curated by Walter Guadagnini. In 2003 he exhibited a selection of his photographs that had been commissioned by the Musée Rodin of Paris in an exhibition curated by Sandro Parmiggiani Camille Claudel. “Anatomie della vita interior” (The Anatomy of an Interior Life) was held in the Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia.
In 2005 he commenced his research into a memory that unravelled as an internal journey of recall, and in this he attempted to revitalise his emotional past through narrative and evocative images. In 2008 he took part in the third edition of the European Photography Show in Reggio Emilia. In the spring of 2010 he presented his personal exhibition “Memorie” (Memories) along with a book by Sandro Parmiggiani edited by Allemandi.
He was amongst those artists invited to show their works in the “Padiglione Italia”(Italian Pavilion) of the 54th “Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia” (The International Art Exhibition of the Biennial of Venice) with six photographs from his work “Memorie” selected by Italo Zannier.
Dedicated to the bodily forms of the world of sculpture, his project Eros, the result of years of research into stylistics inside exhibition areas all over Europe, was proposed for the first time at the Chic Art Fair in Paris in 2012. It was then to become “ Sognare giocando”(Dreaming playing) and was a headlong trip into the fantastic world of infancy through toys and other playthings. This is one of his more recent pieces of work and was exhibited at the Arte Fiera in Bologna in 2013, then at Mia in Milan in 2014.
His volume “Memorie”(Memories) was reprinted in 2014, and was edited by Danilo Montanari Editore. It represents a new chapter in his research that continues with many new shots and can be seen in a good number of photography fairs all over the world (Arte Fiera Bologna, Mia Milan, Turin, Verona, Paris, Brussels and Miami). For two consecutive years he has been among the finalists for the BNL Prize at Mia 2013-2014 and was the winner in 2015.
His photographs are kept at the following locations: Archives Photographiques du Musée du Louvre, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Bibliotéque Nationale de France in Paris, Musée Réattu d’Arles, Musée de la photographie in Charleroi, Musée Nicephore Niépce Ville de Chalon sur Saône, Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris, Polaroid Collections, the United States Museum of Photography and at the Museum of Thessaloniki (Greece).

Studio Clelia Belgrado
VisionQuesT contemporary photography
Piazza Invrea 4r, 16123 Genova, Italy
Tel.+ 39 0102476642 - 3356195394
www.visionquest.it - info@visionquest.it

Bruno Cattani

“The Memory Box”

curator Clelia Belgrado

Opening reception: Friday 11th March, 2016 time 6.00 pm
Viewing Period: 12th March – 3rd April 2016
Location: Sala Liguria, Palazzo Ducale, Genova, Piazza Matteotti 9, Italy
Monday to Sunday, 10.00 am to 7.00 pm

www.brunocattani.it

The photographer will attend the opening reception.