A show and the catalogue.. Here is the book introduction by Massimo Morello
“I am a farmworker,” the “Mari” photographer often says. It is the proud claim of his cultural heritage, of his close ties to his roots. Something deep-rooted and genetic that also manifests in the place he calls home, where he sporadically and briefly touches base and where the landlocked horizon offers plenty of topographical, chromatic and conceptual variety.
Even so, he spends much more of his time away from home. That is when seas appear on the horizon of our photographer farmworker and he becomes the Mari photographer (hereafter Mp).
Mari, the plural form of mare (Italian for sea), denotes a geographical idea. As civilisation historian Fernand Braudel wrote of the Mediterranean: “Not one landscape but innumerable landscapes. Not a sea, but a succession of seas. Not a civilization, but civilizations amassed on top of one another. The Mediterranean is a very old crossroads. For millennia everything converges upon it, mixing and enriching its history: pack animals, vehicles, goods, ships, ideas, religions, arts of life”.
Seas plural, then, not the one “Boundless Sea” described by David Abulafia in “Human History of the Oceans”, in which he writes “ancient geographers (...) imagined it to be a single Okeanos of intermingled waters, a concept revived in modern use of the term ‘World Ocean’ to describe all the oceans as a single unit”. An archetypal sea described by Philip Hoare, a kind of marine Henry Thoreau, in “The Sea Inside”: “Perpetually renewing and destroying, the sea proposes a beginning and an ending, an alternative to our landlocked state, an existence to which we are tethered when we might rather be set free”.
In short, seas are where our Mp spends a lot of time working, which is also true of fishermen. In his essay “La letteratura italiana e il mare” (Italian Literature and the Sea), Goffredo Fofi describes fishermen as “farmworkers of the sea”. In Italy at least, “the world of fishermen and sailors had to be decisively, firmly anchored to the land”. This is also true of the Mp. He is anchored not just to his land of origin, his home village, fields and countryside which continue to be his safe harbour, but also to the land as a geographical space, the planet’s surface where, thinking back to Braudel, our entire history has played out. One land surrounding the sea, then, not the other way round. You only have to look at his images. Barring a few rare exceptions, the seas are shot from land. It is the land that insinuates itself into the sea, that rises out of it in the form of rocks and cliffs, that shapes its geometry, colours, life and work. It is on the land that the sea leaves its mark, whether as shipwrecks or the seabed revealed by a low tide.
In some shots the seas are shown from above, providing a bird’s eye view of how the water intersects with the land. Birds, not fish, are the animals seen most often in the photographs. Air and land, then, more than sea. In Mp’s images, the seas are almost latent, like exposed yet still indistinguishable images waiting to be developed in order to be seen. It’s an action or interpretation that arises from the Mp’s professional background. It’s what led him from the darkroom to the computer.
But what is the real and most profound connection that ties our photographer farmworker to the seas? The similarity between farmworkers and fishermen isn’t enough of an explanation. Unless you look at it as a parable hiding a latent truth. In this case, the unconscious desire to be a sailor, not a farmworker. And there’s one simple reason for it, as explained by Björn Larsson in “Raccontare il mare” (Stories of the Sea): “The advantage of being a sailor is that people expect you to leave sooner or later. That’s the basis for his whole reputation. The sailor who puts down roots quickly loses his rakish, adventurous appeal.” And those who know Mp know how much he dislikes “putting down roots”. The sea is where he channels his existential urges. “It gives you the chance to meet other kinds of people, the locals in each place. And to live a nomadic life...the sea is the place for trying out other lives, other thoughts, other identities, other passions, for putting yourself on the line”. But there’s more. “It’s inspired by the sea as a space where you are free to move around, where nation states have not yet managed to put borders, a place where you can see far into the distance, and where you can imagine what might be over the horizon.” It’s no surprise that this kind of thinking is behind another of the Mp’s collections, entitled “The Last Frontiers. A Journey Through the Borders of Humanity”, where he recounts forty years of work inspired, at least initially, by a world rich in ethnic and cultural diversity.
All this talk of journeys and horizons brings to mind a quote: “Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—(...) I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation”. I have left out the first three words, the most famous ones, which would immediately identify it as the opening line of “Moby-Dick”: “Call me Ishmael”. But only because I wanted to apply it to myself. And to the Mari photographer, obviously.
Even so, he spends much more of his time away from home. That is when seas appear on the horizon of our photographer farmworker and he becomes the Mari photographer (hereafter Mp).
Mari, the plural form of mare (Italian for sea), denotes a geographical idea. As civilisation historian Fernand Braudel wrote of the Mediterranean: “Not one landscape but innumerable landscapes. Not a sea, but a succession of seas. Not a civilization, but civilizations amassed on top of one another. The Mediterranean is a very old crossroads. For millennia everything converges upon it, mixing and enriching its history: pack animals, vehicles, goods, ships, ideas, religions, arts of life”.
Seas plural, then, not the one “Boundless Sea” described by David Abulafia in “Human History of the Oceans”, in which he writes “ancient geographers (...) imagined it to be a single Okeanos of intermingled waters, a concept revived in modern use of the term ‘World Ocean’ to describe all the oceans as a single unit”. An archetypal sea described by Philip Hoare, a kind of marine Henry Thoreau, in “The Sea Inside”: “Perpetually renewing and destroying, the sea proposes a beginning and an ending, an alternative to our landlocked state, an existence to which we are tethered when we might rather be set free”.
In short, seas are where our Mp spends a lot of time working, which is also true of fishermen. In his essay “La letteratura italiana e il mare” (Italian Literature and the Sea), Goffredo Fofi describes fishermen as “farmworkers of the sea”. In Italy at least, “the world of fishermen and sailors had to be decisively, firmly anchored to the land”. This is also true of the Mp. He is anchored not just to his land of origin, his home village, fields and countryside which continue to be his safe harbour, but also to the land as a geographical space, the planet’s surface where, thinking back to Braudel, our entire history has played out. One land surrounding the sea, then, not the other way round. You only have to look at his images. Barring a few rare exceptions, the seas are shot from land. It is the land that insinuates itself into the sea, that rises out of it in the form of rocks and cliffs, that shapes its geometry, colours, life and work. It is on the land that the sea leaves its mark, whether as shipwrecks or the seabed revealed by a low tide.
In some shots the seas are shown from above, providing a bird’s eye view of how the water intersects with the land. Birds, not fish, are the animals seen most often in the photographs. Air and land, then, more than sea. In Mp’s images, the seas are almost latent, like exposed yet still indistinguishable images waiting to be developed in order to be seen. It’s an action or interpretation that arises from the Mp’s professional background. It’s what led him from the darkroom to the computer.
But what is the real and most profound connection that ties our photographer farmworker to the seas? The similarity between farmworkers and fishermen isn’t enough of an explanation. Unless you look at it as a parable hiding a latent truth. In this case, the unconscious desire to be a sailor, not a farmworker. And there’s one simple reason for it, as explained by Björn Larsson in “Raccontare il mare” (Stories of the Sea): “The advantage of being a sailor is that people expect you to leave sooner or later. That’s the basis for his whole reputation. The sailor who puts down roots quickly loses his rakish, adventurous appeal.” And those who know Mp know how much he dislikes “putting down roots”. The sea is where he channels his existential urges. “It gives you the chance to meet other kinds of people, the locals in each place. And to live a nomadic life...the sea is the place for trying out other lives, other thoughts, other identities, other passions, for putting yourself on the line”. But there’s more. “It’s inspired by the sea as a space where you are free to move around, where nation states have not yet managed to put borders, a place where you can see far into the distance, and where you can imagine what might be over the horizon.” It’s no surprise that this kind of thinking is behind another of the Mp’s collections, entitled “The Last Frontiers. A Journey Through the Borders of Humanity”, where he recounts forty years of work inspired, at least initially, by a world rich in ethnic and cultural diversity.
All this talk of journeys and horizons brings to mind a quote: “Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—(...) I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation”. I have left out the first three words, the most famous ones, which would immediately identify it as the opening line of “Moby-Dick”: “Call me Ishmael”. But only because I wanted to apply it to myself. And to the Mari photographer, obviously.
