BEFORETHE DAWN

F R A N C O D O N A G G I O

BEFORE THE DAWN

F R A N C O D O N A G G I O

. On cover: work #14

Before the dawn is a descent into my semi-dark sides along a path through suspended spaces, along the breath of the night.Following the industriousness of the bee and assembling together hundreds of tiny and big elements, I have created worlds of smooth surfaces, of passing clouds.Like in huge silent theatres, matter and clouds become visual metaphors of my existential research. In these territories I converse with my recurring and extreme mystic question, always neglected.The frantic actors of my scenarios walk fast towards other theatres, crushed by huge spaces. They move and stray beyond an earthly time into another dimension where the connotation of the existence tone down into a great plasma of fortuity and chaos like in dreams, like in the obsession of the existential question.

And by the awareness of limit …

Franco Donaggio

work #15

work #1

THE NIAGARA OF OUR PRESENT TIMEby Roberto Mutti

Silent but able to evoke sounds and noises, static but able to reproduce movement, photography has struck everybody’s imagination since its very beginning – even its detractors’ ima-gination, who were actually very numerous by then – and this because photography knew how to use a really effective weapon: wonder. Initially it was obviously appreciated for its new and highly imaginative procedure, but soon the public attention focused on the results that more and more skilful authors were able to attain. If portrait still remained in that private sphere which had already characterised painting portraiture - infact the purchasers used to link the photographer to the person portrayed - things were very different with urban or natural landscape photography. In fact, the latter aimed at capturing a wider public, that is people who already knew those places photographed and who first got to know them through the photographic prints. The absolute sharpness and precision of daguerreotypes conveyed a flavour of authenticity, while the long exposures needed transmitted to the image something indeterminate. There are plenty of examples to cite but, among them, we have chosen one which we consider particularly intriguing because it was carried out in one of those places where man stops spellbound to look at the sublime beauty of the wilderness. We are speaking of a daguerreotype shot in 1853 by Platt D. Babbitt who was given, right that year, the exclusive authorisation to portray the Niagara Falls from the north-American side. The image frames an absolutely unconventional overall sight: here the author chooses to grant the falls a portion of central space but at the same time to let the sky, the vege-tation, the bank on the foreground be visible too. On the bank there are one man and four women standing who turn their back to the camera and are obviously enchanted before that stunning landscape. We know that Babbitt actually specialised in that kind of shooting: he would wait for tourists to prepare for the sitting, then would shoot without them realising, and then would propose them his photos which were inevitably purchased. We are not interested in the commercial aspect, but in the photographic composition: and it was exactly this working methodology to urge the photographer to study a shooting style particularly focused on the relationship between the grandeur of nature and the small sizes of people who, however, always cover a key role in the overall shooting context. All the protagonists of these scene seem to possess the precise awareness of being men and women of their time, both proud of the progress in science and technique and also sensitive lovers of the beauty of landscape with which they wished to have a relationship of reciprocal empathy.

What happened today to a photographer who may want to take up this subject and renew the relation linking man and nature?

The technological, aesthetic and humanistic changes to be taken into account are so profound that we have to map out a completely different route. On this deep consciousness is based Franco Donaggio’s work, who in his brand-new series Before the Dawn launches a riveting challenge, that is recovering the true sense of marvel which seem to have been lost due to routine, tiredness, disenchantment. After developing a really unique poetics by steering his photography into a rather surreal taste he is particularly keen on (as various works, from Metaportraits to Reflections prove), Donaggio operates with great insight inside this virtual universe created by digital imaging when it lets be guided by a project of a real expressive force. If in Urbis he had already investigated into the urban world and had transfigured it into a view where you could hear the architectural echoes of Constructivism and Rationalism, in Before the Dawn he goes a further step forward until creating his own structures of an urban landscape which seems to spring from fantasy or desire. Everything here becomes grand and charming: huge columns soar into a sky they seem to support, never-ending walls create scenes which define spaces; steep planes establish new unfo-reseen balances in a universe which seems suspended in an allusive void. Nothing we see is real even if our perception says it is: we are just like those anonymous 19th century onlookers who found themselves before the show and the rumble of the falls, who would probably be reached by some sprays of water brought in by the wind. We, men of two centuries afterwards, in order to feel the same sensations must face a completely different world made of geometric constructions whose grandeur we do grasp but not quite its meaning: clouds trapped by net-like solids; lights going down from high above as thought they were thrown by spotlights hidden in a deep faraway blue sky; stairs running upstairs and downstairs and chasing after each other according to an impenetrable logic.The employ of a black and white of an extraordinary formal cleanness and a careful use of the digital techniques enhance the mysterious quality of these places which consequently become more and more theatrical. Franco Donaggio leads us into a world which remembers the science-fiction’s but which at the same time he seems to suggest that what we see we don’t have to look for it in other far off realms. In fact, he induce us to look at what surrounds us through new eyes: those gangways suspended inside a sort of a cupola; those squares built like labyrinths; those stone slabs one upon the other designing strange borders; those abysses attracting our curiosity: well, all that is our world. It’s the projection of the thoughts, hopes, fears and dreams of those small human beings who move about in those spaces and observe them, as we always tend to do, a bit scared and fascinated.

#8 .

In my dimension as an artist, photography is a tool for inner knowledge, a shamanist

practise to go somewhere else.

Thanks to this mental method I managed to make visible some concepts of synthesis

that, before, were just faceless creatures in my mind.

work #16

My work takes its energy from what is metaphysical and spiritual,

Its trunk is the obsessive research,

Its flourishing is the final work of art.

work #12

work #17

work #7

work #34

work #13

work #2

Countless are the nights when I get to my office riding my bike through a part of the city which

is drowsy and harmless like a sleepy giant unaware of the oneiric power of those very moments,

when the celestial singing of birds is made louder by the surrounding silence.

The dawn is about to come and I intensely live a poetic mood hovering between darkness and light,

abyss and revelation. Before the dawn.

It is exactly this new conceptual drive that originated my work which I chose to entitle Before the Dawn,

perhaps an autobiographic picture- story drawing inspiration from Dante, a kind of long path between a

personal contemporary “obscure wood” and my yearning for light…

work #23

work #33

work #31

work #32

work #6

deta

il

deta

il

work #41

deta

il

work #10

deta

il

work #40

Personal profile

Born in Chioggia in the province of Venice in 1958,

Franco Donaggio has been working in Milan as

photographer and artist since 1979. Right from the

start of his professional career, Donaggio focuses mainly on the technical side of photography, investigating

it thoroughly from the darkroom to the study of light, experimenting every possible creative effect.

Hence his fame as one of the most pre-eminent artist in the contemporary photo scenario.

In 1992 he is awarded the prize ‘Pubblicità Italia’ for professional still life photography, while in 1996

his fine art project entitled Metaritratti wins the Italian ‘Kodak Gold Award’ for portrait photography.

Donaggio dedicates more and more passion and efforts into personal photo research thus gaining the

enthusiasm of several America, European and Italian gallery owners who start a long-term collaboration

with him, like the Joel Soroka Gallery of Aspen which offers him the chance of exhibiting in the major

art and photo festivals in the USA, such as Art Miami in Miami, Photo LA in Los Angeles, AIPAD show

in New York and Art Fair, in Chicago.

Donaggio has been devoting himself for years to art and today he is judged as one of the top Italian

artists entirely working through photo experimentation. He has carried out a lot of works appreciated

worldwide, has appeared in several magazines and exhibited in many galleries and museums in

Italy and abroad, among his most recent accomplishments are: Manege Museum, St. Petersburg;

54° Biennal of Venice; Museo Marliani Cicogna, Busto Arsizio (Va); Museo la Civitella, Chieti; CAMeC

centro d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea, La Spezia; Forte di Bard, Valle d’Aosta; Museo Civico di

Chioggia (Ve) and others.

His works are part of several public and private collections, among them: Fendi collection; Saudi

Royal Family, 3M collection, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and many others.

Donaggio was visiting professor in Accademia di Brera; Università Cà Foscari of Venice; Istituto Italiano

di fotografia of Milan and thesis commissioner at Istituto Europeo di Design of Milano.

Technical informations

Before the dawn, created between 2007 and 2009 includes 40 images:

Limited edition of 5 samples, giclée print 40,7x54 cm - 2 cm of white border included - numbered and signed on the back

Limited edition of 5 samples, giclée print 110x147 cm. - 5 cm of white border included - numbered and signed on the back

2 author proof.....................................................................................................

Courtesy:Image #12 - sculptur by Marco Porta (side up - detail).Images #34, #33 - sculptures by Carlo Manini.

© Franco Donaggio 2013, all rights reserved

Milan, october 2013.

work #36, detail in transparency

W W W . D O N A G G I O A R T . I T

. back cover: work #10

work #36

W W W . D O N A G G I O A R T . I T