Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee

From 22nd September to 14th November 2021 will be open “Di roccia, fuochi e avventure sotterranee” at the MAXXI in Rome, an exhibition that involves five talents of the contemporary Italian photographic panorama.

The project behind the exhibition was commissioned by Ghella, a company specialized in underground excavations, and brings to light more than 100 images made between 2019 and 2020 in five different yards around the globe, from Europe to Oceania.

The exhibition is introduced by a series of photographs that testify to the birth and evolution of the Ghella yards from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day.  The images of Fabio Barile, Andrea Botto, Marina Caneve, Alessandro Imbriaco and Francesco Nori complete the historical excursus. The visual researches of the five artists navigate within the magnum sea of the eternal relationship that is established between the natural world and the influence that human beings exert on it.

But where the human activity of the ground usually takes place outside, this time it is the hypodermic tissue of the urban body of cities and metropolises that is documented; excavations, explosions, erosions and cores become the main elements of a terraforming process that is immortalized within a series of shots of aesthetic refinement and iconographic finesse that distinguish the photographers involved.