Description
Photographs from the series Land (Earth), which make up the latest publication by the Gliwice Museum and BLOW UP PRESS, were made by Lorenzo Castore in 2018 in Silesia, during an artist residency organized by the Art Reading Room - Gliwice Museum.
These are works dedicated to Polish subjects: the first time Lorenzo Castore came to Poland in the 1990s, he photographed Silesia then, starting from Gliwice. Photographs from that period open the publication, creating a reference point of how things were. Photos don't make for transparent coverage - Wojciech Nowicki writes in an essay -. is a rather somnambulistic journey, stealthy sights spotted in a malaise, through sweaty windows. The black plasterwork of a nameless city, winter fields under a heavy sky: the blackness of the earth, the soiled whiteness of the snow. Abandoned, weed-covered areas, nebulous train stations, cigarette after cigarette. Mine-like visions from behind the shafts of a bathyscaph, at the bottom of the ocean. Spectral processions under the sign of the cross, the proximity of a girl. Soulful. This is what the first part of the album is about. The second part was created during Castorego's returns to well-known places, but seen in a different way today. All this land is after another moulting, growing new skin - Nowicki adds. - The shed shell is drying up and crumbling into dust: the remnants of small businesses from a few years ago lure with fading advertising, big chain stores open and close. Silesia, today more global than ever, still conscious of its distinctiveness, is blending into the world of (...).
Lorenzo Castore, one of Italy's most prominent photographers, photographed the new Earthlings on the old Earth. He portrayed them up close, without artifice, with attention. The resulting book is an attempt at a new language for telling Silesia. Its centerpiece are portraits, testimonies of encounters, from the most fleeting, in streets, courtyards and train stations, to the most intimate, in private interiors, all charged with a powerful energy (stbsite of the Museum in Gliwice).
Sara Moon:
There is a strange, timeless solitude in Lorenzo's photography. The photographer is a wanderer who sees and records the moments of everyday life and then makes them available to us. They communicate emotionally - the beauty that gives meaning to walls, streets, landscapes, women, men, children... all photographed with great empathy and a special sense of light.
Earth is a story about a place and the people who belong to it. A personal reflection on a place where traditions of different cultures mixing together are cultivated, a place that witnessed the events that erupted with World War II, a place where industrial prosperity has already ended, where the past gives way to the present.
Lorenzo Castore first came to Gliwice in the late 1990s, looking for a new way to express his emotions. Enchanted by the people he met on his way, he returned
There after almost twenty years. The book is a summary of his wanderings, a photographic travelogue that transcends time. In his story, Lorenzo focuses on the people.
Although they remain nameless to us, we feel sympathy for them, and such closeness between people and photographer is only possible if the photographer is sincere. And that is exactly what Castore's photography is: balanced, focused, respectful and open to other people. And that's exactly what this book is.