The faces and ephebic bodies “told” through the black and white shots of Mariano Doronzo in the “Lanterna beach” exhibition, hosted in the rooms of the Gallery of Modern Art and Contemporary of Palazzo Dogana, curated by Daniela D’Elia. The photographer of Barletta origins, after several years spent in London, decided to return to his hometown, and today pays homage to Foggia with a stage of his successful monograph which – despite the international title – narrates very interesting facts “locals”; facts that take place around a truly singular space that is positioned at the end of the eastern “arm” of the port of Barletta and that Doronzo has been documenting punctually since 2012.
The result is exceptional storytelling which reads the lives of “ordinary” men passionate about the sea and the sun in the city of the Challenge. A real community that populates the most secret corners of the pier with its natural pools. However, Mariano’s lens captures, with due technical and stylistic mastery (which many of those in the sector recognize in him), cerulean eyes, Apollonian physiques, breathtaking costumes and seascapes as far as the eye can see. It’s difficult to say who the real protagonist is concept, anthropomorphic elements and architectural or landscape elements are perfectly integrated, giving space to a randomness of scenes all rigorously bathed by the Adriatic Sea. From games of scopone sitting on disused crates of Peroni beers, to dangling trousers hanging out in the sun, to makeshift bar fridges, everything at “Lanterna beach” introduces us to an eternal becoming; the free time component reigns supreme with the carefree nature of holiday days, a holiday that here seems to have no end.
The technique then veers from street photography to photography glamour and even to shooting fashionable. How can you not think in front of the sequence of works, of the advertising campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana in the shadow of the Faraglioni (the white slip is an inevitable semantic reference, ed.) but also of the androgynous sailors of Jean-Paul Gaultier, who dust off the whole theme anecdotal of the marinare, and constitute an interesting parameter of formal comparison. Upon closer inspection, however, that vision of the “road” as I wrote in the incipit, leads us towards a more experienced and troubled humanity than the glossy one of advertising. After all, “Lanterna beach” is a place of abandonment, a space that heals and soothes, which sometimes leads “wanderers” to find a common identity or professionals to get lost in the ravines of everyday life. laissez-faire.
From a historical-artistic point of view there is a certain reference to the series of “little fishermen” by the Neapolitan sculptor Vincenzo Gemito or to the genre scenes also Made in Naples, of which Massimo Troisi sings in his dialogues with the urchins of Borgo Marinari in “I thought it was love but instead it was a carriage” or the same beardless but grim faces of the boys in via Donna Olimpia n. 30, which marked the most intense pages of Pasolini’s novels. This neorealism which from its origins to its declinations in the realism of Italian comedy, captures some aspects of those who live on the margins: this marginality becomes in the population of “Lanterna Beach”, a legitimate interpretation but also a social consecration that makes visible, the invisible, in the eyes of the World.
At this point it is not obvious for Doronzo to translate this substance into form and he does it delicately, without lingering in the rough, without even riding the archetype of the sea and its inevitable charm. Of course, men (and only men) of all ages show themselves proudly masculine, in athletic dives, painted with tattoo ink, squeezed into little more than Adamic costumes, they even stand as models to Mariano’s attentive gaze. The aesthetics of beauty in its most intellectualistic variant – I would like to comment – touches the entire project to the point of making us want to get to know the “boys of the Braccio”, as if certain images were taken from the back stage of an interview on the community and the its dynamics. Recommended, indeed highly recommended to discover that you can rejoice in the sun, have fun at the sea and feel melancholy in front of a sunset, strictly in the shade of “Lanterna beach”. Well done Mariano!
