Alessandro Gattuso
Alessandro Gattuso was born in Vico Equense (NA), graduated in cinema from the academy of fine arts in Naples, the city where he lives and works. After winning the second edition of Fotogrammi del Napolifilmfestival in 2012, he began an internship as a stage photographer for the Teatri Uniti company. He was selected by the Combat Prize in Livorno for a collective exhibition with the installation In the mirror of the eyes of others, in 2015 he participated in the MAF project myth art and photos. His first short film Por Cuestion by Corazon, shot in Barcelona, won first prize at the Omovies Festival and participated in several festivals. His second short film Antonio degli Scogli, 2016, produced by Arcimovie and Filmap, receives a special mention at the Napolifilmfestival and participates in the Trieste Festival and the Italian Film Festival in Lisbon.
He collaborates with the Vice magazine with reports related to the city of Naples. In 2019 he was selected for the Sounds and Visions residence of the Aamod film archive.
His personal research is focused on issues concerning identity, biography and queer culture.
"Cosmi"
intimacy s. f. [der. of intimate]. – 1. Character of what is intimate. In particular, a relationship of friendship, trust, close familiarity. [...] Sometimes it refers rather to environments where one is among intimate people, among family members, or where one feels perfectly free and at ease, far from any indiscretion from strangers. [...] In the spiritual sense, the intimate, most secret part of oneself [...] 2. In the concrete sense, in the plur., the intimacies, the intimate parts of the human body (specifically female).
If the body is the surface that acts as a hinge between inside and outside, Alessandro Gattuso underlines its ability to become a liminal territory between individual and social perception, between representation and self-representation. The young subjects chosen by him engage in a relationship
with those who observe them, first of all the photographer through his lens, but in general all of us who feel called into question by these gazes, almost challenged to take note of a nudity that is not only physical. The act of showing oneself becomes an exercise in awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses; through the language of the body, with attitudes that, case by case, reveal confidence or shyness, boldness or withdrawal, pride or vulnerability, we perceive all the facets of a transformation process that rejects the idea of compliant beauty to fragment itself into its infinite possibilities . The bodies immortalized in classic poses, which evoke the children of Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931) in the idyllic atmospheres of Arcadia, reveal all their contemporaneity in a historical moment which seeks to give a new meaning to the concept of "diversity" by putting the very canon on which the very idea of the classic was founded is in question. These individuals, each with their own history, thus become spokespersons for a new universal approach which, in refusing forced adherence to predefined labels, claims the centrality and uniqueness of the individual.
Extract from the critical text LAB03: between words and images by Alessandra Troncone
