Plays of shadows, monuments, people and animals reflected in mirrors of light or water that give an original interpretation of the city. It opens on Sunday (April 28), at 6pm, at Exhibition Palace of the Banca del Monte di Lucca Foundation, Piazza San Martino, the photographic exhibition Brief distances (A city to browse) by Paolo Pacini, edited by Paolo Bini. Created with the Lucca Sviluppo Foundation and the patronage of the Municipality, Lucca Summer Festival, We Love Ph, Fiaf (Italian Federation of Photographic Associations) the opening of the personal exhibition of Pacini will be accompanied by a musical performance by the guitar quartet, composed of the students of the Passaglia musical high school: Timothy Clerici, Nicolò Marchini, Federico Paoletti and Gabriele Siciliano, coordinated by Professor Francesco Ciampalini, will perform music by Andrew York, Maximo Diego Pujol, Camille Saint -Saëns.
The exhibition, which will remain open to the public with free admission until 16 June 2024, is divided into sections.
The range of shadows: The story begins during the pandemic, from the window of the editorial office where Pacini works, overlooking an almost always deserted and ghostly square: “I began to freeze some moments of this long emotional and social “interval”, fixing it in particular in the few shadows of ride”.
Mura, the bird oasis: taking advantage of this interval and the ecological corridors project, even the urban fauna has been enriched with new life, around the historic city walls, where the flight of aquatic birds has designed new spaces.
Urban visions in black and white / Urban visions in color: the walls, the monuments, the historic buildings act as a motionless counterweight to the flow of daily life, between full and empty spaces, lights and shadows, sometimes dreamlike atmospheres.
The city of music Lucca – Lucca Summer Festival: “Lucca is also music, of every kind – says Pacini -. Among its many expressions I chose the close encounters with the stars of the Summer Festival, the international event that every summer in Piazza Napoleone or on the terraces of the Walls awakens the city from its centuries-old torpor, to the rhythm of rock, soul and pop. And through all these images, so different from each other, I tried to compose a sort of zero-mile emotional reportage to tell in my own way, going from room to room, leafing through page after page, this small, large, magical world that is Lucca … Images at short distances”.
A series of quotes will accompany the visitor in reading the shots, from the Rolling Stones to Alda Merini, passing through Giuseppe Ungaretti, from Lucca by origins and memory.
Pacini, born in Lucca in 1963, professional journalist, for thirty years The nation of Lucca deals mainly with crime and judicial news, but has made the professional eye a filter with which to observe the city and grasp its faces, sides, moments, like those on the stage of the Lucca Summer Festival, where he immortalized more than one big name, or like the flight of the herons over the ditches under the walls, one of the series for which he is best known as a photographer. Known online, since it is an activity that he carries out out of passion and mainly using social media as a “place of exhibition”, so much so that this exhibition is the first, in a physical sense, which is dedicated to his work, in Lucca.
Pacini writes about himself: “I’m a fphotographer by passion, or rather today I would say for a… flashback. From an early age it was my father who put a camera in my hands, obviously analogue, and who passed on to me the taste for framing, composition and the moment to be fixed in time. In my youth I started with a photographic club in Lucca, I exhibited in some group exhibitions, but after a few years I abandoned everything, also thanks to the theft of my equipment during a trip. The advent of digital photography intrigued me again and pushed me after years to pick up a camera again: it was a partly new language, a different challenge, interesting and pleasant to take on. As a journalist I have always written about my city from many aspects, but at a certain point I also felt the need to tell it in another way, through images. I was perhaps looking for a bit of poetry among so much prose. I wanted to show its many faces, often in contrast with each other: lights, shadows, silences, black and white, but also sudden explosions of music, life, nature and colours”.
“In this sense, the tsunami of the pandemic, paradoxically, also offered me an unexpected opportunity – he continues -. From the window of my editorial office, overlooking an almost always deserted and ghostly square, I began to freeze some moments of this long emotional and social ‘interval’, fixing it in particular in the few passing shadows. Meanwhile, taking advantage of this interval, even the urban fauna was enriched with new life around the city. In short, I tried to put these different elements together to compose a sort of zero-mile emotional reportage that told the story of this little big world that is Lucca… Images at short distances.”
From the new and successful partnership created by Palazzo delle Esposizioni with Artebambini, Tuscany section, the program of meetings dedicated to schools, children and families during the exhibition period has already been defined: visits and photographic and artistic workshops that are different each time and tailor-made for families and children aged 3 to 10. The dates are: Thursday 2 May, Wednesday 15 May, Wednesday 5 June, Monday 10 June (at 5pm) and Thursday 13 June at 10am. For information, reservations and costs: [email protected] – cell. 3339676264.
Paolo Pacini is part of the photography club WeLovePh, is a member of Fiaf and is particularly passionate about street and nature photography, as well as rock concerts. He has mainly participated in group exhibitions, recently guest with a project at Livorno Photo Day and some of his images were also welcomed as part of the event Photolux in the 2019 and 2021 editions.
