The 2004 Calendar

Photographs : Vincenzo Ammazzalorso

Vincenzo Ammazzalorso this year leaves his thematic direction to present images which complete a journey which he has made over four years, in search of comprehensive documentation of the Abruzzese countryside and mountains.

He adds to his close-up views of animals at pasture a comparison between plants and mountain backdrops, glimpses of hills and the geometry of cultivation, with trees which act as scenery or as protagonists. The plant life is rational or invasive, but always characterized with an attentive and involved eye. There is no complacent indulgence in chromatic special effects. Even when the composition tends towards abstraction, an analytical approach recalls the sense of a scientific disposition which Ammazzalorso never quite abandons.

The commemorative theme of his work is here present in a contemporary photograph which recalls a traditional kind of work, performed with a pair of oxen, almost as if to point up the poetry of work which does not appear to have anything anachronistic about it.

This year too, Ammazzalorso expresses an overwhelming sense of sadness as he documents the absences and abandonment of a world far distant from intensive technology, which is in danger of becoming a memory.

This 2004 calendar, in the effectiveness of its glimpses, expresses a vision, rich in humanity, which still can show the signs of an authentic presence, not yet standardized.

Nerio Rosa