COMMISSION ROME: La Belle Dame Sans Merci by ALEC SOTH
Every year a major international photographer is commissioned to portray Rome in total freedom and this prestigious rendez-vous with the ROME COMMISSION reaches its ninth edition this year.
This year’s commission went to the great American photographer Alec Soth, one of the protagonists of the contemporary photographic research.
The work presented by Alec Soth , called La Belle Dame Sans Merci, was inspired by Keats’s famous poem of that name. During his residence he says that its purpouse was to show the beauty of the city “But I found it impossible. The city was too beautiful to photograph” he declared. In conseguence his visual journey of the “eternal city” passes through myths, symbols, sensuality and poetry. Soth reveals Rome through its details and documenting the everyday life.
Alec Soth is universally recognized as one of the leading figures in the on-the-road photography school of Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Stephen Shore. He received fellowships from McKnight, Bush and Jerome foundations, and in 2003 he won the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. Alec Soth’s photographs are part of major public and private collections, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Walker Art Center. His work has been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Biennial and a retrospective at the Jeu de Paume in 2008. Soth founded the publishing house Little Brown Mushroom in 2010.
The choice of Alec Soth is part of a broader research on American photography started by FOTOGRAFIA, in tune with the recent exhibitions of Stephen Shore at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Joel Sternfeld in the spaces of MACRO Testaccio, the residences of Tim Davis, Montheith Matthew and Nancy Davenport and the second edition of the project ‘A Question of Time’ at the American Academy in Rome, the 2010 Rome Commission of Tod Papageorge and the exhibition of Gregory Crewdson at Gagosian Gallery with photographs taken at Cinecittà.
Every year international photographers are selected to do a portrait of the city of Rome like in the past editions Josef Koudelka (2003), Olivo Barbieri (2004), Anders Petersen (2005), Martin Parr (2006), Graciela Iturbide (2007), Gabriele Basilico (2008), Guy Tillim (2009) and Tod Papageorge (2010).
Rome is the only city in the world to have assigned for nine consecutive years her “portrait” to such elite of international photographers. The project has also involved many other authors as David Farrell, Leonie Purchas, Tim Davis, Matthew Montheith, David Spero, Pieter Hugo, Juan Fabuel, Agnes Geoffray and Miguel Rio Branco.
This big project will be in the future an important exhibition to show the “Portrait” of Rome in the new millennium.
Emiliana Tedesco
Fotografia- International Festival in Rome
From septembre 23 to October 23, 2011
MACRO Testaccio _ Piazza O. Giustiniani 4
Roma
