Can you spend your life photographing poverty, marginalization and hardship without ever slipping into the fetishism of suffering? The Roman exhibition dedicated to the photographer and journalist Luciano D’Alessandro (1933-2016) shows that it is possible: it is enough to have only one objective in focus, that of documenting and leaving the viewer with the responsibility of getting involved.
D’Alessandro manages to be a figurative artist in the rigorous composition of his images but also a journalist and reporter in his equally rigorous documentary approach. The photographs of the cycle The excluded, investigation conducted in the Materdomini asylum of Nocera Superiore in 1969 or the research Inside the houses (1977) e Inside the work (1978) are images of great impact and dry formal solidity which, thanks to their transparency, force us to question ourselves, to take a position.
As in certain Renaissance paintings, many of the characters photographed by D’Alessandro seek the viewer’s gaze and invite him into their space. You never get the impression of spying on a scene from the outside, as often happens with photojournalism, but we are always invited to come in and face these little stories of ordinary isolation, misery or exploitation one by one.
The exhibition Luciano D’Alessandro. The ultimate idealist at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere it is open until 5 September and is curated by Roberto Lacarbonara. It is accompanied by the book of the same name published by Postcart. The images come from the Luciano D’Alessandro archive preserved since 2017 by the Bibliographic Studio Marini in Bari.
Daniele Cassandro
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