honorable mention
Andrea RICCI belgium
title
Rond Point Schuman
Born of a moment of frustration, the project became an ongoing exercise of basic photographic practice, influenced by Stieglitz's famous quote: “For that is the power of the camera: seize the familiar and give it new meanings, a special significance by the mark of a personality.”
The choice of both Holga and iPhone (Hipstamatic) as tools for recording images is linked to a pictorialist perspective but also aims at eliminating the technical dimension to the advantage of pure framing.
In the series, the camera follows the neighbourhood’s icons that remain the basis for the construction of the geography of this power space.
Framing is not dictated by a concern for realism, and sometimes any reference to structures is reduced to a vocabulary made of deep blacks, metals, cement, the very opposite of a humanist, ideal citadel, that integrates nature in his concept of modernity and strength.
Human presence is crushed, isolated, without density, sometimes reduced to shadows or white ghosts. Rond Point Schuman is seen as a bizarre, surreal, cinematic spectacle. A brutal world, empty and vain, cauchmardesque, oscillating between boredom and intense solitude.
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entry description
The Rond Point Schuman series is dedicated to documenting life in a place of power: a few miles around the Rond Point Schuman, Brussels hosts all the main buildings of the European Institutions.Born of a moment of frustration, the project became an ongoing exercise of basic photographic practice, influenced by Stieglitz's famous quote: “For that is the power of the camera: seize the familiar and give it new meanings, a special significance by the mark of a personality.”
The choice of both Holga and iPhone (Hipstamatic) as tools for recording images is linked to a pictorialist perspective but also aims at eliminating the technical dimension to the advantage of pure framing.
In the series, the camera follows the neighbourhood’s icons that remain the basis for the construction of the geography of this power space.
Framing is not dictated by a concern for realism, and sometimes any reference to structures is reduced to a vocabulary made of deep blacks, metals, cement, the very opposite of a humanist, ideal citadel, that integrates nature in his concept of modernity and strength.
Human presence is crushed, isolated, without density, sometimes reduced to shadows or white ghosts. Rond Point Schuman is seen as a bizarre, surreal, cinematic spectacle. A brutal world, empty and vain, cauchmardesque, oscillating between boredom and intense solitude.
about the photographer
Andrea RICCI is Italian, but lives and works in Brussels. He is a journalist and former contributor to La Repubblica; he has a PhD in Communication and Information Sciences, and a personal history which anchors him to Florence and Rome, to Art History, to Renaissance and Baroque in particular. Participant observer when working on photojournalism projects, Andrea has a keen interest in documentary and conceptual photography. His current photographic projects focus on countries in crisis, symbolic urban locations, the expression of popular religiosity and the notion of aesthetic order. Influenced by 6x6 Medium Format photography, his pictures are mostly square (1:1) or panoramic (1:2,75 - 1:3).back to gallery