Luca Bortolato. Fotografie inutili. Archivio fotografico ciclo-diffuso

The project, curated by Federica Arcoraci and sponsored by the City of Padua, revolves around the revitalization of an old photograph collection sourced from forgotten family albums, which Bortolato has recovered and acquired over time. He breathes new life and meaning into it through a performative action that engages the public.

Last April, the artist set off from Verona on an old bicycle for a journey that is taking him across all of Italy. At each stop on the journey, the artist performs a live action, inviting participants to choose one of the “useless photographs,” which Bortolato stamps, marks with the location and date, and signs, gifting it to the participant. A portrait is then taken of the participant with their face covered by the photograph they received. Through the dual act of selection and giving, the “useless” photographs are “reactivated”, gaining new meaning and new life, and becoming part of a unique “nomadic archive” of the artist, who keeps track of all the “no longer useless” photographs.

As part of the project, Bortolato will create a special variant for the Foundation, born from his encounter with the Archive of Arnaldo Pomodoro – where the study and “reactivation” of photographs considered marginal is a daily activity – and with the poetic approach typical of the Master’s work. Each photograph is a document of memory, a piece of the story of an universe of people, places, moments, and stories. And each photograph has a narrative power, inherent in the image but amplified by the presence of written words, stamps, dates, and references to people and/or situations on the back: phrases that are indecipherable to us because they belong to other lives, lives that are not ours, writings that are ultimately incomprehensible and mysterious, just as the symbolic sequences that characterize Pomodoro’s work.

Just as it happens with images, the encounter with these mysterious writings, between these traces of other people's lives and our own lives, our dreams, and our intimate stories, sparks the birth of new visions and interpretations, a new narrative that reactivates and gives new life to the “useless photographs”. As a guest of the Foundation in the spaces of the Studio of Arnaldo Pomodoro, Bortolato will perform the Fotografie Inutili performance, showing participants only the back of the photographs: each person will have to choose the photograph to “reactivate” not based on the image, but on their curiosity or an unexpected resonance with the written traces on its back.