The Past of the Future. Francesco Zanot in conversation with Olivo Barbieri.

by Fantom

As featured on Fantom 04 / Summer 2010

Olivo Barbieri (Italy, 1954) investigates the intersections of reality and its perception through a single lens. The series Flippers, 1977-78, featured here was the starting point of his observations over the uncertainty of the world’s surface, which then continued with an extended research on artificial illumination (that converts every place into its own stage-set) and the use of selective focus. In the renowned project Site Specific he looks at different cities around the world from a helicopter and recreates them as in a plastic model or even a drawn sketch using both photography and video. His pictures have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, as have his films, which have also been screened at many festivals including Locarno, Toronto, New York, Berlin and Sundance. His images always lie between photographic accuracy and truth.

 

Francesco Zanot: Why a series all about pinball machines?

Olivo Barbieri: Actually it isn’t only a series about pinball machines but about finding an abandoned depot where I believe they used to repair or assemble them.

 

When did you do the work on this series?

Between 1977 and 1978.

 

Had you already been involved with photography for a long time?

I have always been involved with photography. Some years before I had studied history and technique of photography with Paolo Monti at DAMS, the Department of Drama, Art and Music Studies at the University of Bologna.

 

At that time who were your contacts in the photography industry in Italy? Who did you first show these photos to?

At that time I had decided to abandon photography because I felt that all the people I had come into contact with were very distant from my real interests. However, everything happened quite fast. I had taken part in a debate on photography publishing, where I had exchanged a few words with Mario Cresci and Luigi Ghirri, who I had never met before. A week later I bumped into Ghirri in a photographic laboratory (we lived in the same city), where I was picking up the proofs of the pinball machine photographs. He was curious about what I had said during the debate and asked me to show him what I was doing. He immediately invited me to exhibit the Flippers at the Civic Gallery in Modena with a text written by Franco Vaccari.

 

This series was also exhibited at the Diaframma gallery in Milan, which was the first gallery entirely devoted to photography to be opened in Europe in 1967. How did you get there?

I don’t really remember but I do recall that when I went to see the space they were opening an Aaron Siskind’s exhibition.

 

And what was the response of the public, the critics and the art and photography world?

This first project of mine became very popular and was exhibited numerous times. Essentially it got me known. It was very important because it enabled me to join the community of artists who were important in those years.

 

What were your references when you produced these pictures?

Mostly Man Ray and Andy Warhol.

 

The pinball machines act as a cultural reminder – an image bank of an entire age. In your pictures we can make out rock music legends, science fiction sets, symbols of western epics and movie stars. Do you still think that your work can be read as a sort of post-war iconostasis in which we can find all the protagonists of mass culture?

Yes, and the more time goes by the more these images become legible and perhaps necessary.

 

Color is the absolute protagonist in these pictures. I don’t think I have ever seen, either in a book or in an exhibition, a photograph of yours in black and white. Have you always taken photographs in color? Why?

My generation knew for certain that color photography would be the most important art form of the second half of last century. However, that said, I don’t see any difference between black and white and color.

 

Regarding the rules of photography, for some of the photographs in this series you have taken shots of the back of the lid of the pinball machine, showing a sort of negative (on the glass) of the image that is on the opposite side. Is it a tribute to the medium you use?

Yes it is, and it is an important part of this project. Those shots are like the plates of glass that were used at the beginning of photography. They are multiples.

 

Or is there a political message? I mean, most of the glass plates you found in the depot are broken, piled up, faded…

I am not saying I am clairvoyant but one knew that the use of images and their fragmentation would escalate thanks to new digital technologies and the Internet.

 

In this first series you already questioned the ability of photography to render a credible version of our world or rather, more in general, our ability to comprehend what surrounds us by means of our vision of it. During your entire career you have continued to examine this issue which has remained the crux of your work. Was it already clear to you when you began the series on pinball machines or did a second reading lead you towards a perpetual examination of this question?

It was already clear to me. What I wondered was why keep producing images and of what use were they.

 

And that helicopter that stands out against the sky painted on the pinball machine?

I had forgotten all about this picture. When I saw it again I realised that the pictures already knew what was going to happen, a trip in time and not just in space… indeed.