encounter between photography and the living

From 10 May to 23 June 2024, Il Meccanico in Verona hosts the Luce Lebart exhibitionphotography historian and associate curator of European Photography, entitled Mold is beautiful.

The exhibition, presented by Grenze – Arsenali Fotografici and taken from the volume of the same name, recounts the meeting, the technique (photography) and the living (microorganisms). A meeting that gave birth to new forms and that invites us to reflect on the fact that “the aesthetic qualities of a photograph are decidedly independent of an artistic will”.

Mold is beautiful, Luce Lebart

Mold is beautiful: the exhibition in Verona

The exhibition consists of images remained for almost a hundred years in a wooden box damaged by a flood. Time has intervened on one side and microorganisms on the other like molds and yeasts. Hence Luce Lebart’s reflection on the concept of authorship.

“Who is the author of these images shocked by time, air, water and manipulation?”, he asks. “Is he the photographer of the 1920s whose trace and name are lost? Or are they the microorganisms that have transformed the images into an extraordinary new aesthetic?”

“Wonders of oblivion, the success of negligence and disinterest, these images, ruined by a flood, have been deprived of the light of day for years.” And so”abandonment, yeasts and flours have been the terrain of an extraordinary random creativity”.

Terrible enemies of archives – yet precious to man in many areas, from bread making to the production of wine and beer – yeasts and molds have taken over these photographs. They “activated” and transformed them. Giving birth to a new living image.

Mold is beautiful, Luce Lebart

Luce Lebart

Photography historian, curator and researcher for the Archive of Modern Conflict collection. Her works are about the archive, the scientific imaginaries, the techniques and the materiality of the images.

She is the author of photography booksincluding precisely Mold is beautiful (2015) or Gold and Silver (2019), and reference works as The great photographers of the 20th century And A World History of Women Photographers.

Among his exhibitions, Cloud Album (Vancouver 2022); The Saga of inventions (Rencontres d’Arles 2019); Mauvaises Herbes (CPIF, 2022). Since 2022 she has joined the artistic direction of the Fotografia Europea festival.