Abandoned structures, boats resting on solitary beaches, sculptural rocks, palm trees and cactuses desiccating under the sun – the visual experience of leafing through Greta Valente’s “Tre mesi” is a physical and spiritual journey through Southern Italy, between Naples, Caserta, and Salerno. Perceiving the elsewhere as a ‘negative mirror’, as Italo Calvino puts it, Valente explores the self, as a traveller recognising ‘the little that is [their], discovering the much [they have] not had and will never have.’ (1974 [1972]). Projecting in the other than self, not in an attempt to own, or alter it, the artist identifies both with the space photographed and the camera. She inhabits the space through the mediated act of photography, performing a visual ballad of static sentimentality.
Stillness reigns over these fragments of reality, intriguing the viewer even before they pause on the details. Observing Valente’s photographs, Luigi Ghirri’s 1978 classic writing in his book “Kodachrome” comes to mind, in which Ghirri unveils his varied sources of inspiration: ‘things and life’, which image make ones able to distinguish the identity of humans. Through the perspective of Valente’s camera, this image is re-activated, always a fragment drawn from the bigger picture of reality. Reminiscent of Ghirri’s ephemeral architectures and the world of provinces, objects that are considered unbeautiful although charged with memories and vernacular significance, these pictures are a trace of time and belonging. Not only Valente’s photographs are traces of humanity, but also they bring back to life the dismissed and often refused nostalgic bond between humans and what is no longer in use. Silence scatters the memories of these peripheral places, yet stillness transforms the ordinary in a self-portrait of the author. Somewhat inward-looking, Valente’s documentary style intersects with the diaristic mode. Nonetheless, the title “Tre mesi” (Three Months) suggests the journal-like nature of the photobook.