The Dream World of Andrea Meacci, photographer from Castiglione

In a world of photographers full of technicalities, chasing the pixel, defining the objectives using expensive means that better embody the mental nuances of the photographer, there are those who shy away from all this and take photos that could be taken by a cardboard camera from a few euros for children.

It is the case of Andrea Meacci, Castiglionese who entrusts the essentiality of his soul to photography and who exhibits at Castiglion Fiorentino Photo Festpresent event in 3 spaces until May 12, 2024, including the brand new Ceccherini Gallery located under the Vasari loggias in Piazza del Municipio, the church of Sant’Angelo in via del Cassero, and the Art Gallery.

The maturation of seeing, observing things and people leads to an essential vision. Her story as a photographer parallels his life story. He started in his youth with photos in search of sharpness as a driving force towards hyper realism, and now arrives at the Essence of Life.

He is a slow observer and after having photographed placid, possibly foggy countryside, pushing himself to the maximum limit of the absoluteness of almost totally white images, he now calmly, almost lazily, throws himself into an opposite world which is a beach, normally populated with more dynamic, noisy, out of the normal everyday life of city life.

But he does it in his own way, with his eyes. She does it as an observer who shys away from wearing

even sunglasses, but rather he keeps his eyes half-closed, where the vision is dazzled by the sun, blurry, poorly defined, and the colors, even of people, almost become spots of pale watercolor. The loss of visual definition of people. which would lead to saying that they are expressionless, they are in reality, and on the contrary, more expressive, and they take nothing away from the representation of the moment, rather they leave the viewer as if in a flashback of memories, of old black and white but artificially colored postcards and wasted

from exposure to the sun in a display on the sidewalk of one of those toy, flipper, flip-flop, bazaar shops on the Adriatic coast.

And on the stage of the sea he captures images of very normal people, anti beach fashion. People who look like they’re in a 1950s photo, no beautiful women, but curvy older people. The people he represents are Beach guys of films from decades ago. Andrea Meacci succeeds, with

the dreamlike use of the room, taking us back to people free from beach fever.

A bit like a little Federico Fellini, but without the joyful, disruptive Romagna noise of the director.

Meacci also takes care of the optical contour of his images with a scenic setup that immerses the observer even more in his world between the indefiniteness of his photos and the careful attention to the micro details of the setup, where every centimeter is not left to chance , but it has its own reason. A two-speed Andrea Meacci.

A journey back in time so as not to forget and bring us back to the essentiality of the moment and the gestures.

With Calm and Humanity.

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Piero ROSSI