In this series, Lagniappe presents a different work each week from the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, with commentary from a curator.
It might seem strange to speak of a camera — a machine, an inanimate object — as having its own kind of vision, or way of seeing the world. A distinctive feature of photography, however, is the camera’s capacity to flatten space and make the world appear as if everything before us exists on the same picture plane.
This photograph of the countryside in the Marche region of Italy by Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000) is a prime example. By employing an extended focal length (put another way: a very long lens), Giacomelli manages to collapse the space in front of him, making a picture where elements that we know to be farther away horizontally appear to stack vertically on one picture plane.
The result is a disorienting, surrealist field of patterns and shapes. The horizon line that Giacomelli includes at the top of the frame as a reminder or linear perspective is one clue to help us decipher the image.
From a practiced lifetime of looking at photographs, we can all intuitively read this image and understand that the tree at the bottom of the picture is closer to Giacomelli’s lens than the farmhouse at the center of the photo, and we are actually looking at a gradually sloping hillside rising in front of the camera. Part of what makes this photograph enjoyable to look at though, is experiencing a little disorientation, and seeing space in a new way.
Known for high-contrast photographs like this one, Mario Giacomelli trained as a typographer and painted as a hobby before picking up photography in the early 1950s.
Visitors to the New Orleans Museum of Art can see this photograph on view as part of the exhibition "Photogenic: Selections from the James and Cherye Pierce Collection," through Sept. 10.