Claudio Cravero shows at PHOTO MARSEILLE # 8 two series, Fantasmi and History of Violence.
Fascinated by the cinema, in the 70’s, he explored the technique and the result through short photographic narratives, then approached synthesis of experiments, but only to pass on the inevitable transitory character of the illusory certainties of the everyday life, often reduced to a simple sign of “passage” destined for oblivion as in Fantasmi. Other times, it is a simple act of exorcism: the fear of death, its staging by the media, the impulse of violence irreparable and irresistible in moments of madness (History of Violence ).
FANTASMI
Vacant houses, uninhabited or temporarily empty, but showing traces. One does not abandon a place radically without leaving behind us the memory of oneself, signs and objects that belonged to us as we belonged to them. The houses are shells, extensions of our body, we change our dwelling, but we leave memories, testimonies of our passage.
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Dead bodies apparently, victims of some violence suffered in their own domestic space. Their identity? Insignificant. As suggested by the choice of never showing faces, a practice from which is articulated the gradual dismantling of the traditional conventions of portraiture. But neither the hand giving death nor even the murder weapon are the focal points of the photographer’s quest. The protagonist is the light: as sharp and cutting as a blade. History of Violence is a catalog and at the same time a disciplined inquiry: the certainty of fiction (it is about a death retold ) that refracts all the ambiguity of the real.
Claudio Cravero lives and works in Turin.
He began photography in the 70s joining theater activities for several years (from 1983 to 1991 he was one of the founders and actors of FANTEATRO).
From 1998 to 2002, with three other photographers, he founded the cultural association FINE (Fotografia e Incontri con le Nuove Espressioni) with a non-profit exhibition space dedicated to new photographers.
In 2014, along with five other artists, he founded the cultural association ACCA to organize the opening to the public of the Turin workshops and create an international network of exchanges between artists.
Influenced by theatrical experiences, Cravero’s photographic projects start from a frame that develops bit by bit, with a course always open to contrasts and deviations, and are determined by the space or by occasional meetings. The presence of natural light is the constant of all his works that refer to the classics of painting, the starting point of his in-formation, and the cinema of David Lynch and David Cronenberg.
Since 1985, he has exhibited in Italy, France, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Scotland, Argentina and the United States.
