Inhabiting the light

Since the beginning of the history of photography, architecture and space have been the protagonists of images. In addition to the desire to document them, the choice is also linked to a question of shutter speeds, which with this type of subject were free and could be as long as necessary.

Stefano Tubaro in his works on architecture, presented in the exhibition, created at three moments in his career, Contrattempi (1997-2002 with an appendix from 2015), Contrazioni (2010-2016) and Stanze fotogeniche (2019-2024), has forcibly inserted light in order to create another situation in which static and movement are in direct confrontation.

The subjects of the first series are abandoned architectures in the northern Friuli and Veneto regions, where the memory of places is decisive. Each of these buildings brings with it stories of life, of work, of various humanity. Tubaro abandons the camera, which remains posed and in the meantime moves.

Eight years later he began working on Contrazioni (Contractions), a digital research project that allowed him to work more on the image. The title recalls tensions, an action contrary to that of time that has deteriorated the subject because a contraction creates a strong spasm, a jolt, an annoyance.

Man is physically absent, but his presence is everywhere. Narrative plots without beginning or end are only hinted at: destroyed furniture, broken doors, where light seems to draw shapes. Another determining element of his research is the attraction to the beauty of form, which is evident in his most recent work, The Photogenic Rooms.
A work that he arrived at through the linguistic references of his career, particularly the analogue one, with the more substantial and physical part of photography.
We are faced with three pieces of research that could also be read from an existential point of view, which from the external dimension of Contrattempi leads us to the internal, more bare, stronger, more physical dimension of Contrazioni, to arrive at the intimacy of Le stanze fotogeniche, which are born in a moment of loss, of solitude in which individual memory becomes collective and vice versa.

The exhibition is organised by Erpac, the Territorial Cataloguing, Promotion, Enhancement and Development Service, in cooperation with the Codroipo Municipality.