How did your passion for photography started? Do you remember your first picture?

Allegra Martin (AM): I remember the first time I made a photograph. I was very young and intrigued by the Polaroid we had at home. It seemed like a magic box. I think it was then that I made the first picture: in the antique shop of my mother, but I do not remember exactly what it was. I was more fascinated by the “object” of photography rather than its ability of reproduction. Like today, basically. In later years I photographed as if I was taking notes, with small compact cameras. It was a way to take possession of the things I saw, to experience the world that I felt. During the university I picked up a camera, a bit by chance, an Olympus OM10 35 mm with a broken exposure meter. I started taking pictures around my house in Venice using some black and white films. My favorite subjects were seagulls and stones. I began to be excited very much about photography, and so with my savings I bought a Nikon F3 and several rolls in color.

At the Venice IUAV you studied with Guido Guidi. How his influence helped you to mark your path in photography and when you think you’ve found “your” style? 

AM: I attended the course of Guido Guidi in 2006, towards the end of my studies. At the time I hungered for photography, I had just rediscovered it and I was trying to follow both a theoretical and practical training. I had followed before some technical courses on photography and the history of photography, and the meeting with Guido Guidi was critical and fulminant. I remember very well the enthusiasm with which I took part in lessons.

 
© Allegra Martin, ‘Lido’

I owe him a lot, he taught me to “see”, the importance of the error and the insistence of the look. But above all to look, to think about photography and to know how to build a visual experience. Only today I fully understood the lesson of not hurrying and to be able to relate first of all with our own photographs.
Guido Guidi is a great professor. The danger is the emulation: for a long time, I admit, almost unconsciously, I wanted to shoot like him. But this is not possible. There is only one Guido Guidi. In a training course I think to “copy” or emulate a teacher is a very important phase, is a way to digest and assimilate a teaching.

The first year of university (architecture) I took a course called  'Typological and distributive characters of buildings’ where the teacher forced us to copy and memorize plans, sections and elevations of about 50 famous buildings. Initially I found it very silly, I did not understand the meaning of “copy” details of projects that I already knew. Years later, when I was designing,  I realized that through those reproductions I had experienced them, and I had taken possession of the proportions and, through the design, their spaces.  

Guido Guidi still remains a reference for me and his work a constant teaching, yet you need to find your own way. Only recently I have the impression to have started to walk with my own legs. It is a lonely road, as Robert Adams wrote in a letter which I had the honor to receive some time ago: « that doing it is inevitably lonely. Though there is consolation in the voices of collegues like yourself».

Your works are rooted in the territory of northern Italy. Which imaginary of landscape are you looking for?

AM: I do not seek any landscape, indeed, the process is just the reverse. What I do in the outside landscape is search for the traces of my inner landscape, to be surprised by encounters and to recognize myself in them, through photography. Rarely when I photograph, I define an imaginary beforehand: photography for me is a continuous discovery and surprise. 

My photographs are made where I happened to be or to live. Obviously in some places I went just to take pictures, but I can safely say that it is not very important where I photograph. I care more for what I feel in a certain place. I could photograph the whole life in the same area, it is not so important. The other truth is that to me is hard to photograph. I always had to do other jobs to support myself, and this means having less time to travel and to photograph elsewhere. But even if I had the chance to go anywhere, I think that my approach would not change. I could get surprise while walking in Reggio Emilia as much in Texas, the important thing is to be ready for the right moment.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Un mezzo giro’

‘Laboratorio Italia’ that took place during the last edition of SIFest - Savignano Images Festival, in which you participated, offered us a 360 ° view of many of the projects that focus on the “Italian landscape.” How much do you think it was possible to deviate from a genre benchmark as ‘Viaggio in Italia’ by Luigi Ghirri? What’s new and “good” among the contemporary projects that focus on this topic?

AM: This year ‘Laboratorio Italia’ has established, in my opinion, a dutiful and interesting attempt to put together the entities that deal today with photography (of landscape?) in Italy. This, for me, meant to be an opportunity to activate a detailed discussion and a reflection on the realities themselves and then with the public. That, however, seems quite difficult today in Italy: there is much excitement, many new projects, great photographers but, on the other hand, a weak critical apparatus which “can read” (and why not, undermine) those energies. In general, I think the problem is that no one has the courage to take risks.

This is the problem, or at least, I feel like this: we are moving forward, but with the mind we are still in Ghirri’s ‘Viaggio in Italia’. And in between, there were a lot of other experiences. Although my training is closely linked to the experience of the photographers of ‘Viaggio in Italia’, I believe that the danger now would be to continue to re-propose the formal aspect of “that” photography. Although, I think the photography as a tool to describe the landscape is always “actual”.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Lido’

Returning to Savignano: curators (Massimo Sordi and Stefania Rossl) did a very brave and appreciable attempt. In many of the experiences that have been part of ‘Laboratorio Italia’ there was also my work, since I took part in many collective experiences of recent years. Getting there, in a sense, it was like seeing staged the actual scene (or at least, a part of it) of the photographic research on the landscape in Italy. This made me think a lot. First, most of the photographs and the authorial and collective intent seem to go in the same and someway “reassuring” direction. And the results are good, very good. It amazes me to think that there are so many photographers in Italy today who choose a documentary approach. In Savignano I wondered, very sincerely: where are we going? What is my role and my direction? I would have liked to talk about it with the others involved.

 
© Allegra Martin, Castelfranco, 2013 in “Ritratti”, Documentary Platform, 2014, SiFest

What are the lanterns which light up in the sea of photography?

AM: The fixed points are precisely my photographs. They remind me what I am, and make me feel in good company in difficult times. And then there is the comparison and support with other photographers and artists, the exchange with people that I respect and whose work I appreciate, which is fundamental for me and that is a continuous stimulus. And what I saw, what I learned, what I have yet to know.

The only certainty is my need to photograph. Some time ago I read an interview-conversation between Louise Bourgeois and the curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York that found me very close. The artist said: «(…) More simply, we could call them artists, and  as engaged in the act of creation they are exposed to its curse. Or its privilege. What motivated me, and motivates me, is the realization that being an artist is a privilege (…) Yes, it’s a curse, because it “sequesters” life. But it is also a blessing, a consolation. What I do is tiring.» And yet she continued, «My youth work was the fear of falling. Then it became the art of falling. Fall without getting hurt. Finally the art of not giving up.» In my view I can only figure out my path and clarify to myself why I do photograph. And today I am not afraid of making mistakes.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Un mezzo giro’ 

The 2014 was a profitable year for you. The release of the book ‘Lido’ and in December the opening of two exhibitions: ‘Lido, Ravenna and Red Desert’ in Malmo, Sweden and one at MyCamera Ravenna where you exposed your new work ‘Double Bind’. Please tell us about.

AM: Much has happenend in 2014, and very quickly. In May 2014 came out ‘Lido. A sud di nessun nord’, the result of a commission by Osservatorio Fotografico di Ravenna within the photographic research project ‘Dove Viviamo (Where we live)’. Last October, the Osservatorio has curated and organized an exhibition in Ravenna on the outcome of the works commissioned in recent years. 

In December 2014 were opened my first two solo exhibitions. Shows that exhibit two different jobs and point in opposite directions. However at the same time they are totally me (I am full of strong contradictions!). On December 4, opened the exhibition ‘Lido, Ravenna, Deserto Rosso’ at Breadfield, a space dedicated to photography in Malmo, Sweden. Tony Kristensson and Genny Lindhe, the creators and curators of the gallery, asked the photographer Gerry Johansson to propose a “young talent” to be presented with an exhibition, and Gerry, who I had the good fortune to meet a year and a half ago, chose me. The exhibition at Breadfield was accompanied by a catalog with my photographs and a series of unpublished photographs of Gerry Johansson from ‘Amerika’; for the occasion was asked to the writer Stefan Lorenzutti to write a text about our work, and so came out a piece really very deep.

On 12 December instead opened the exhibition ‘Double Bind’ at MyCamera in Ravenna by Alessandra Dragoni and with a critical text by Roberto Maggiori. A year and a half ago I felt the need to photograph without thinking, as if I had never done it before. It was an exercise. So I bought a disposable camera and started to take it with me, especially when photographing at night. I was looking for ghosts. I started to take pictures without even looking inside the machine. From the disposable camera I passed to a small compact automatic cameras without the possibility of adjustment, such as the Myu II. The important thing was that they were equipped with flash. I thought that it would be a kind of “diary” of my life, that I would not show anyone. But then I sent some pictures to friends including Alessandra Dragoni, photographer and owner of the gallery “MyCamera” in Ravenna. Alessandra knew me for “other” photographs. She became intrigued about this work and asked me to participate in the series of exhibitions that she was thinking: ‘Things that I could not know if I had not seen them at MyCamera’. The idea was to “expose” little known aspect of an artist. The title, 'Double Bind’, refers to a study carried by the American sociologist G. Bateson, that of the “double bind”. In a relationship involving two people intimately there may be a short circuit and a gap that affects the communication thus making the inner will incongruent with the external evidence. This is exactly what is photography for me. It is a dialogue denied, it is the outside search for the threads of a discourse that lies inside.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Deserto Rosso’ 

In “Red Desert” by Michelangelo Antonioni desolation rules and the earth is populated by ghosts. How this vision approaches to your project exhibited in Malmo?

AM: In the selection of photographs exhibited in Malmo nine were made in the places where it was filmed 'Red Desert’, fifty years later. ‘Red Desert’ is absolutely my favorite movie, and it was shot in a territory that I became very familiar with. The film has different levels of reading and the images have a strong symbolic power, as well as narrative. Antonioni puts into question the relationship of the points of view and the subject-object-vision, and in the film there is always the dilemma hallucination/reality. There is a scene in the film where Giuliana asks the son what does 1 + 1, and he answers 1. She picks him up, smiling, and saying with confidence that 1 + 1 is 2. But in the end she does not know what is real, she has lost all confidence to the world. For me, the Red Desert is the loss of the sense of reality. What should I watch? What do I see? I tried to make me the same question when I am photographing. I wanted to lose myself in the vision. Another theme that has always interested me in his filmography is the representation of nature; Giuliana is a wild animal in a cage, and throughout the film there is this tension between the “natural” landscape and the industry. So I started to photograph the pine forest and the deer that are now confined into the fence in front of the Enichem plant in Ravenna. I’m still working on it. 

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Deserto Rosso’ 

‘Lido’, ‘Ravenna’ and ‘Red Desert’ are three different series, even if the photographs were made in the same area, around the city of Ravenna. With which procedures and criteria you have decided to approach them for the exhibition in Sweden? These photographs may be for you the same work?

AM: Tony and Genny (curators of the exhibition in Breadfield, Malmo) known me for the work ‘Lido’, and thus we decided to bring together a selection of photographs from this work, plus other shots that I had done in the same area of Ravenna. The idea was to present a body of photographs taken from various projects, but that had the some consistency. I believe that my work is increasingly oriented to be organized as a unique “flow” of photographs.

‘Lido’ is a series in itself, born of a commission by the Osservatorio Fotografico. The photographs were taken in a specific place at a specific moment in time and thus constitute a “closed” work. Yet at the same time, the photographs of ‘Lido’ may be presented in the exhibition along with other photographs taken from ‘Ravenna’ and ‘Red Desert’ just because they are different parts that make up one body of work. Some of the photographs from the series that (by convention) I called ‘Ravenna’ were actually made in the same days when photographing in Lido, maybe just a few miles from there.

I believe less and less in using the word “project” in reference to my work. When I started taking pictures, it was necessary to build a framework within which to work; but today there is no a priori project, my photographs are all “autonomous” worlds which then make up my career, my life. The real work is put them together, but this comes after and it’s perhaps the most difficult job.

The language of ‘Double Bind’ is a meta-language. Have you used a disposable camera with the specific intent to make your work “the most rough and dirty as possible”? Photographing as if you had never done it before, as to reset everything and get to a “primordial state”. Why this desire?

AM: I would not speak of a “primordial state”, but as I said before, it was an experiment and an exercise which is still ongoing. The goal was to take me to photograph without any technical pretense. Rethinking the act of taking a photograph as a simple fact: the disposable camera or small compact denies the possibility of any “technical” choice and allows a minimum range of action. Thus you stay with the process which interests me most. Photography as a tool of knowledge.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Double Bind’

Roberto Maggiori writes: «The path therefore more than the result: the (s)object on which it is paid attention, and photography - tending to zero degree - understood without the mediation of software and coeval technology. Technology inevitably characterized by the historical period that creates it, transforming it into something else than the pure and simple tool, something that you can not think anymore because it is already thought.»

With this project you think you have moved away from your initial photographic research as a student at IUAV?

AM: In recent years I have certainly traveled a path but, you know, is always me. I believe that life is cyclical, and that the path is oddly shaped, twisted, non-linear. I think we do a lot of things, and inevitably, we make choices that mark our path. But I like to think about taking a road and to make detours. It is a bit like when I go out to photograph with my car. I like to establish a route and then be able to “transgress”, I like to lose myself. I keep thinking that even if you do things that appear very mixed or very different, then it all comes back and goes to make up the whole.

Since I started taking pictures, I had many moments of “crisis” (defined as stages of a change) and reflection and doubt, leading to “changes in the route”. The directions that you take can be manifold, but in the end the journey is only one, it is your work and your life. When I look at the photographs I did ten years ago, I find myself at that time: I was thinking differently, I was different from what I am today, and perhaps photography meant something else to me. However I was me. I remember a statement by Lewis Baltz during the interview with Jeff Rian in which he says that one of the things you learn when trying to reinvent yourself is that at the end of each day’s it’s you again.

 
© Allegra Martin, 'Double Bind’

What are your future plans?

AM: I would love to spend a few days at the seaside, to the north, or in a remote dacha in the Russian countryside (and who knows that while you read this interview I might be there …) I am currently involved in a project in Reggio Calabria where in late January I attended a  residency within the project ’The third island’. I started to develop my photography project on the work of Maurizio Sacripanti, which is very important to me. I also have many other things on my mind and future projects, but I do not usually talk about what I have not yet begun. What I have promised myself is to give more time and space to my work.

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LINKS
Allegra Martin 
Italy