Her name is Paola Sammartano.
She is our wonderful Italian correspondent!
She is also a photographer. She is exhibiting this month in Milan.
Here is the presentation.- Jean-Jacques Naudet
What’s hidden in a salt-wall?
On closer look, you can see a Zeus, a portrait of a woman, a horse…
That’s the idea that originated the exhibition A Pinch of Salt or rather it is no always what it seems by Paola Sammartano, showing a series of photos that unveil images somehow embedded within the salt-walls of spas, thanks to a particular play of lights, a “naïf” gaze and letting fantasies run free.
A Pinch of Salt is based on the light reflecting and refracting on the salt bricks, that leads to a dynamic perception of shapes and shadows. They appear like changing and wavelike figures, but as the title suggests, we need to go further. Indeed these same images may assume new meanings and different outlines according to each one’s sensibility.
If the challenge while shooting was to sense and correct the elements that “compose themselves”, according to different conditions of lighting, shade, points of view, for those who look at them it is in reorganizing these same structures according to their own perspectives and perceptions. Then, the observers can provide their own spin: the result is a multifaceted perception of a same “shape”. The pleasure lies in the appreciation of surprise and discovery, when the gaze reveals forms enclosed in the blocks of salt, that we had never looked at from this very perspective.
Curated by Simona Como Bersani Sale q.b. is part of Photofestival 14th (www.milanophotofestival.it), the Milanese show devoted to art photography (April 17 – June 30, 2019) that presents photo exhibitions all over the town.
Sale q.b. ovvero non sempre è quel che sembra
From 9 to 16 May, 2019
Conti Confetteria
via Cerva 8, Milano
Italy