On Saturday, June 10th at 6:30 PM, the exhibition “Suspended” will open at Fototeca Siracusana in Syracuse. On display will be around fifteen prints, and the book will be available. I will be present at the vernissage.
Sandro Iovine, an esteemed photography critic, writes about “Suspended”:
When you think about Sicily, the first images that come to mind, depending on the prejudice you may have, are those of a sunny land with a splendid sea, of women veiled in black who wander around in towns where conspiracy of silence is incarnated by men with flat caps on their heads and shotguns on their shoulders. None of this (fortunately) appears in Massimo Cristaldi’s images. Here the protagonist is time, a suspended time, as suspended are the landscapes that Massimo photographed, where everything seems to recall vestiges of a recent, unfinished passage of man. What we can see are places immersed in absence. Absence of care for what man has done in the past, absence of a conclusion for works and construction project that have begun and never finished. It is a time that Massimo Cristaldi photographs and that does not exist, or rather an “interior time” that crystallises, in a continuous present, the wounds of space and proposes “delirious projections into the future”.
Sandro Iovine
“Suspended” is the vision of a photographer who aims to express the common unease felt by many Sicilians living in this “suspended” time, witnessing the impoverishment of their land and the resources of a heritage subject, unfortunately, to the neglect of time and human actions. Massimo Cristaldi utilizes photography to skillfully highlight the apathy and abuses that the author transforms into surreal and almost metaphysical visions, to which we have become accustomed, as well as the notion of accepting a “normalcy” that is far from normal. While not new, the attempts to awaken consciousness are by no means futile, as there is a need for them. The voices that call for a fairer destiny for this southern world must not remain silent, for they will never be enough.
Salvatore Zito
Free admission or by reservation on closing days.