FRANCESCA MARENGO

Orizonte is meant to be a visual path to explore the concept of voyage, of moving through space or time.

The core of the text is taken from some original 19th century travel diaries which depict explorations in North and Central America.

The whole set of images can be read through different levels which are at the same time linked together but also unconnected. The photographs are either inspired by the text or a free interpretation of our contemporary culture.

The ornithological representations, (synthesis of the private collection made by Federico and Ettore Craveri during their explorations), recur and change through an ideal path that is aimed to reproduce the various sensations originated from experiences and memories of their journeys.

Finding an old, long-forgotten collection of photographs – traces from the past, nameless faces from our land or unknown, imaginary places – marked the starting point of this work. These images (highlighting their dream like or didactic implications) are presented together with some extracts from the diaries and the result is a travel account of a universal story.

The voyage is considered at the same time a transition and a reflection: what were we before? Where are our roots? Who are the people in the pictures? Which are the places, the passages, the relationships?

The photographs could have been taken by the same writers of the diaries with the intent to reproduce family faces, to depict their voyages, their discoveries.

Another option is that these photographs could be read as memories from our collective past or our sensations of what we have figured to see, our familiar places or anywhere else: they could be a true fitness or an imaginary one.

Appropriating and interpreting the photographic material has meant focusing on some details to create a new, personal vision of the theme of the voyage.

Discovery and finding raise questions. Their natural consequences are mistery and unveiling.