«Reaching The Distance» (2011) investigates the criticalities in the experience of intimacy, by playing with the motif and imageries of women’s portraiture. Focus of the project is on exploring the counterpositions that characterize intimacy and the experience of visual closeness, and on making them visible.
Extreme closeness is uneasy and charming at the same time – just think of that of love, both romantic and parental. Experience, and therefore memory, are also characterized by a counterposition: they can be punctual and reliable, but also uneven and subjective.
Another controversial point is the one involving the representation of the human face. Today it’s difficult for everyone to distance ourselves from the “official” way of looking at our bodies, especially when they start to show aging signs. I choose to represent my subjects without hiding their actual features.
These faces, taken at a close distance, could belong to any time or epoque. Their referrals are both to past-times and contemporary imageries of women’s portraiture. This ambiguity, and the mentioned counterpositions are central to this project, and are reflected into the used technique, as well. In fact, these photographs are shot with a medium-format camera, their negatives scanned and digitally worked to gently enhance their inner unevenness: deep black spots, pixelated shades, fake colors, but also areas of extreme definition, that work as real-feel devices.
Matilde Soligno was born in Bologna, Italy in 1980.
She graduated in Communication Sciences at the University of Bologna in 2004, and got her Masters degree in Stage Photography in 2005. Her photography work has been exhibited internationally;
In 2010, she was selected to take part in «The Exhibition Lab» six-month master class and final exhibition at Foley and Sasha Wolf Galleries, New York City, and in the International Festival of Environmental Image (FIIE) in Paris.
Her photography work re-elaborates imageries that influence photography as well as visual arts in general. She often focuses on the relation between memory and photography, and specifically on their common nature of emotional traces.
Since 2011, she is also co-founder of Vênus et Milö, a project of multimedia installative art, addressing the theme of human relations to their surrounding environment – how they model it, and how they are (philosophically and materially) influenced by it.
For more of Matilde’s work please visit her portfolio!
→ www.matildesoligno.net
You can also get in touch with Matilde on Facebook, Twitter, Google+
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Related article(s) on ACMV:
→ Vênus et Milö | Riparo (Shelter)
