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LORIS SAVINO | BETWEENLANDS
Enfin Libre is written on a wall in Tunisi. Maybe the process towards a real democracy will be long and full of difficulties but certainly arabian spring could be considered a big movement of ethic and politic protest in name of freedom. Riots have spread quickly and unstoppable in Arabian country to stop autocrats that imposed their authority with force: stop it with repression, lies, authoritarism, corruption, injustice. Spontaneous and withouth leaders, arabian complaint has maked people united again, no longer overawaved to an overconfident and arbitrary power.
Everybody finally has been able to dream of freedom shouting their needs, their hopes, and broken the wall of silence built up in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libia, for decades. To accounting for this arousal so strong, Loris Savino’s research (that has travelled towards Tunisi Libia, Egypt until Lampedusa) rightly started from demonstration that have signed the beginning of the riot. Taken in between crowds of people then matched one another withouth distinction between a country and another, his black and white images tell first of all the collective and phisic need to go in the streets to give a voice to their rights.
Certainly the starting euphoria of the great congregate of the squares (born from passage of word between bazar, mosques and network facebook and twitter) has then often let the people to serious riots armed to repression in many case very hard and bloody also them proved by Savino, in the second part of his search. But to appreciate the real sense of this particular photo project we need to remember that nowadays many images, the most authentic and real of events like those, come in editorial unit and in television by means of demonstrator or fighter.
In the same time to propose to the reader images able to impose visually, medias prefer images always more theatral and typical deliberately dramatic and with strong light contrast . In front of this proctivity , that one of “real”photo , taken from citizens, and that one “powerful”of professionist photographer, Loris Savino finds an original collocation on choosing for his colour images the aware and argue way of a sort of anti-reportage , in fact he doesn’t follow events at all costs, doesn’t intentionally dramatize his images using dark shade and wild light contrast with all their potentional of seduction. Instead he approaches photography documentary.
A photo cleared from personal expressionism and from anxiety of salient moment that check on reality with semplicity and clarity to tell it and to understand it. So the reason why his images doesn’t show us rebels in action, but he prefer to show above all the signs left by their passage: Gheddafi’s bunker in Bengasi, finally conquested and already ruined; a glorious libic memorial bored by shot, the ruins of barricate in Cairo’s street…
In fact war is made not only of moment highly dramatic in their immediacy, with gunfights, shouts and death, but also of a after , a following time where thinks that remains are suspended in doubts, fear and pain; or a sense of death and uneasiness that slaggish swaft in the places, streets and faces of people. The war, then, is also excape from war itself with million and million of libian people escaped in Tunisi, and their tent city enormous but tidy, equally are showned in Savino’s images. And war is also profugees arrived hardship in Lampedusa , with their onus of hopes and memories. Behind them there’s the invisible burden of that one that had died , that tragically had disappears, and that no photo will show us .We could perceive their silent and painful presence, when photography - as in Savino’s work- could become attention and question, and not only chase of events or overacting.
Gigliola Foschi, art curator
© Loris Savino | Linke | Betweenlands
