Villaggio
29 May 2025
29 May 2025
I spent a couple of summers in Sweden when I was a
child. My dad worked for a Swedish company in the Netherlands. I don’t think they owned the holiday park where we stayed, but they probably reserved part of it for their employees. I’m not sure where it was exactly, I think somewhere in the Stockholm archipelago, because I remember visiting the capital, and the park having small boats available to navigate the surrounding waters. It also had a tennis court, and best of all, a sort of community building where breakfast was served. Food that I’d never had before, and certainly not for breakfast, like smörrebröd and meatballs with blackberry marmalade, generously heaped on large plates.
I was thinking about this when I looked into the history of our temporary home in Borca di Cadore. Villaggio ENI was initiated by Enrico Mattei, the chairman of ENI, Italy’s largest oil company, and designed by architect Edoardo Gellner between 1954-1957. A holiday village offering a range of accommodation for ENI employees and sick staff who would benefit from the crisp mountain air. A socialist dream of community, connecting with nature and an architecture devoid of local folklore, in favour of raw concrete, glass and wood. Gellner also designed the villas’ interiors and furniture. For these, he used a colour palette of contrasting hues, such as yellow, blue and red, drawing inspiration from the Californian modernist Richard Neutra.
It's not quite clear how much of the interior of our home was original. Historic photos show that two adjacent rooms had been joined together and that the kitchen door had been replaced with a sliding door. However, most of the furniture appears to be original, with some pieces bearing name tags and serial numbers. In one of the kitchen cupboards, I found piles of dinner plates and cups with a logo that I recognised as the Agip petrol station logo.
Agip was a product of the Italian fascist regime under Mussolini. After the Second World War, Mattei was appointed to oversee the dismantling of Agip, but rather than abolishing it, he transformed it in terms of content, structure and ideology. Under the umbrella of ENI, which was founded in 1953, he turned Agip into a cornerstone of a modern, independent Italian energy empire with a strong social agenda. The famous six-legged, fire-breathing dog logo was designed in 1952, after the fascist period. Mattei’s decision to retain the Agip logo despite the company’s origins can be understood as an example of strategic rebranding and cultural reappropriation.
I was thinking about this when I looked into the history of our temporary home in Borca di Cadore. Villaggio ENI was initiated by Enrico Mattei, the chairman of ENI, Italy’s largest oil company, and designed by architect Edoardo Gellner between 1954-1957. A holiday village offering a range of accommodation for ENI employees and sick staff who would benefit from the crisp mountain air. A socialist dream of community, connecting with nature and an architecture devoid of local folklore, in favour of raw concrete, glass and wood. Gellner also designed the villas’ interiors and furniture. For these, he used a colour palette of contrasting hues, such as yellow, blue and red, drawing inspiration from the Californian modernist Richard Neutra.
It's not quite clear how much of the interior of our home was original. Historic photos show that two adjacent rooms had been joined together and that the kitchen door had been replaced with a sliding door. However, most of the furniture appears to be original, with some pieces bearing name tags and serial numbers. In one of the kitchen cupboards, I found piles of dinner plates and cups with a logo that I recognised as the Agip petrol station logo.
Agip was a product of the Italian fascist regime under Mussolini. After the Second World War, Mattei was appointed to oversee the dismantling of Agip, but rather than abolishing it, he transformed it in terms of content, structure and ideology. Under the umbrella of ENI, which was founded in 1953, he turned Agip into a cornerstone of a modern, independent Italian energy empire with a strong social agenda. The famous six-legged, fire-breathing dog logo was designed in 1952, after the fascist period. Mattei’s decision to retain the Agip logo despite the company’s origins can be understood as an example of strategic rebranding and cultural reappropriation.
But then
22 March 2025
22 March 2025
I won’t say too much
about this, for privacy reasons. But then, it’s been eight years ago now. I
don’t think this project ever saw the light of day, and I see no harm in
posting two pictures from my limited behind-the-scenes series as long as I don’t
name names. One of the most atypical things I’ve ever done, though of course
the setting is all too familiar.
Not to do certain things
13 March 2025
13 March 2025
“So much effort has had to go into trying not
to do certain things. Not to use the sky…to rescue the land. Not to be seduced
into celebrating the power of men and machines, which can have a Satanic beauty
and heroism about it. And not to aestheticize the carnage.” - Robert Adams
Words that make me think of this picture I took in Norway back in 2020. I was quite content with it, I remember, especially with how the clouds had turned out. (Not to use the sky.. ) The quote also reminds me of a comment that I received a couple of years ago, which stated that in my photographic work I seemed to be looking for some sort of reassuring aesthetic, regardless of moral, socially or critical aspects. The question raised is basically whether aesthetics and social criticism are mutually exclusive. I don’t think so. Aesthetics isn’t necessarily reassuring, it can also have a disruptive effect, because the viewer is tempted to find something beautiful that on a closer look actually is not. Perhaps providing a sense of aesthetics is another way of connecting viewer and landscape, and thus adding a sense of ownership and loss.
Words that make me think of this picture I took in Norway back in 2020. I was quite content with it, I remember, especially with how the clouds had turned out. (Not to use the sky.. ) The quote also reminds me of a comment that I received a couple of years ago, which stated that in my photographic work I seemed to be looking for some sort of reassuring aesthetic, regardless of moral, socially or critical aspects. The question raised is basically whether aesthetics and social criticism are mutually exclusive. I don’t think so. Aesthetics isn’t necessarily reassuring, it can also have a disruptive effect, because the viewer is tempted to find something beautiful that on a closer look actually is not. Perhaps providing a sense of aesthetics is another way of connecting viewer and landscape, and thus adding a sense of ownership and loss.
Chaos
16 November 2024
16 November 2024
At some point, I tried to explain why I resent it when people say they have their life in order or are looking for a partner who has their life in order, in the context of dating. I couldn't put
my finger on it, and I didn't make a strong case for myself. But I think what bothers me, apart from the undercurrent of contempt for those who are a little less on top of things, is the failure to recognize that any life, theirs included, could fall into chaos at any moment.
Kozara National Park, Bosnia, 2024. A week before the floods and landslides hit Central-Bosnia.
Kozara National Park, Bosnia, 2024. A week before the floods and landslides hit Central-Bosnia.
In my garden
31 July 2024
31 July 2024
I was working on a text for the forthcoming exhibition Garden
Futures, and before I knew it, I found myself browsing The Photographer in the
Garden.
I took photos of the institute’s outdoor space in 2015, when the first edition of the New Garden was being laid out. They are not very good, basically because I was trying to make pictures that would work as pairs, and they didn’t. Or perhaps some did, but as a concept, it tanked. Since then I have photographed the garden many times. I’m still fond of the one I took in 2021, shortly before it was razed to the ground to make way for the reconstruction of the Museumpark. The new New Garden isn’t half as nice, and I have only photographed it upon request since then. Except for the ones below.
I like photographing gardens, but I have little interest in individual plants or flowers as a subject. I tend to look at gardens as landscape, or architecture. The photos on this page are a little ‘closer’ than that though. Here is a Belgian film I saw a couple of weeks ago. Not about gardens, but about looking, and paying attention. To mosses, made up of thousands of little plants and flowers, but also to long walks across the city of Brussels, its green outskirts, the warm summer night glow, overgrown fences and the slow movement of cranes against a dusky sky. I suspect some of this resonates in these pictures.
I took photos of the institute’s outdoor space in 2015, when the first edition of the New Garden was being laid out. They are not very good, basically because I was trying to make pictures that would work as pairs, and they didn’t. Or perhaps some did, but as a concept, it tanked. Since then I have photographed the garden many times. I’m still fond of the one I took in 2021, shortly before it was razed to the ground to make way for the reconstruction of the Museumpark. The new New Garden isn’t half as nice, and I have only photographed it upon request since then. Except for the ones below.
I like photographing gardens, but I have little interest in individual plants or flowers as a subject. I tend to look at gardens as landscape, or architecture. The photos on this page are a little ‘closer’ than that though. Here is a Belgian film I saw a couple of weeks ago. Not about gardens, but about looking, and paying attention. To mosses, made up of thousands of little plants and flowers, but also to long walks across the city of Brussels, its green outskirts, the warm summer night glow, overgrown fences and the slow movement of cranes against a dusky sky. I suspect some of this resonates in these pictures.
Back to my text.
One of the gardens featured in the exhibition is the one Derek Jarman created at Dungeness on the barren coast of Kent. I look up its exact location on Street View and wander around for a while. I remember the film, The Garden, and find its soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner on Spotify. The soundscapes (not sure if I should call it music) take me right back to the nineties.
Seeing Jubilee in a movie theater in London, the building a former railway station or church, I’m not sure. Driving to Poland in a dodgy car. We borrowed an apartment that I would have loved to photograph now, but my interests were elsewhere at the time. I remember playing The Garden and other art films on VHS tapes and taking stills. Slides, that are probably stored not far from where my feet are. I resist the urge to crawl under my desk.
One of the gardens featured in the exhibition is the one Derek Jarman created at Dungeness on the barren coast of Kent. I look up its exact location on Street View and wander around for a while. I remember the film, The Garden, and find its soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner on Spotify. The soundscapes (not sure if I should call it music) take me right back to the nineties.
Seeing Jubilee in a movie theater in London, the building a former railway station or church, I’m not sure. Driving to Poland in a dodgy car. We borrowed an apartment that I would have loved to photograph now, but my interests were elsewhere at the time. I remember playing The Garden and other art films on VHS tapes and taking stills. Slides, that are probably stored not far from where my feet are. I resist the urge to crawl under my desk.