Le Jeu Savant - Images and Architecture
by Duccio Grassi
Curated by Patrizia Catalano
Contemporary Italian Achitects seem to have forgotten the importance of the relationship between architecture and photography.
An image that correctly interprets the spaces, volumes, and materials of a project has the power to 'make' an author's career.
Choosing a photographer that can read the architect's poetics is a task that shouldn't be left to the planner, who is usually too busy editing a portfolio, a tool to intercept clients or to alert a press that is daily losing track of the value of images.
With this in mind I chose ten images from the many incredible photographs Duccio Grassi uses to tell his story in “On Spaces,” published by Marsilio, which I worked on as curator.
I chose to focus on the photographs that highlight his sensual yet bare-bones poetics.
The volumes are an interplay of elements born from his relationship with the sculptural art mastered by his father: light, the real emphatic element of an architect that has, for thirty years, designed the most important Max Mara flagship stores, attention to detail through typical Italian quality and stubbornness.
Without the hand of a photographer (or, in this case, more than one) capable of capturing these elements, appropriating them and sometimes forcing them out, however, everything would be less comprehensible, lacking the essential minimalist poetics that make Duccio a master.