Few photographers can distill time, memory, and emotion into a single frame the way Emanuele Scorcelletti does. His latest exhibition, Elegia Fantastica, now showing at the newly inaugurated Leica Galerie at South Beach Quarter, is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on the power of images to transcend generations.
While Emanuele may be widely known for the magnificent images he has taken of celebrities, the Italian photographer show that he is beyond an expert in glitz and glamour with his mastery of black-and-white photography in a quiet series of photos.
Curated by Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director & Chief Representative of Leica Galleries International, and Inas Fayed, Editor-in-Chief of Leica Fotografie International, the exhibition offers an intimate glimpse into the heart of Scorcelletti’s artistic soul.
The exhibition draws on his Italian roots and is made up of two groups of work, Memories and Visions.
Expressing his memories in intense black and white photographs, Emanuele takes you on a visual journey to places in the past and a search for meaningful spaces; transforming his personal experiences into moments of collective memory with a strong emotional impact.
Photos under Memories celebrate moments of daily life while those in Visions offer an abstract look flooded with light for a blurred effect — a style that Emanuele prefers.
Using a Leica M6, images under Memories capture everyday life, an intention that Emanuele had, to place the subject within their social context and to use their emotions to convey the spirit of a place.
Emanuele talked about this in an interview with Leica, saying: “The spirit of a place is made up of those who live there and who in their daily lives define its know-how, history, traditions, and alchemy.”
When it came to the photos for Visions, Emanuele swapped the Leica M6 for a Leica Monochrom as it allowed him to “work like a painter” and think of his photographs as paintings.
“Blurring erases the boundaries of reality and projects us into another poetic, intimate and, I would say, mystical dimension,” said Emanuele, “I have tried to represent this power through this particular technique that does not involve any kind of retouching or post-production, and aims to capture the original power of the cosmos.”
