17/04/2009 - COME LA SANTA EUFEMIA DI MANTEGNA

Sull'ultimo numero di "Aperture" il célèbre saggista e critico d’arte inglese John Berger presenta la ristampa di "Nicaragua" il libro della fotoreporter Susan Meiselas (Magnum Photos) e fa un paragone abbastanza ardito fra la scultura di Irsina,opera del Mantegna,e il volto della fotografa, autrice del libro:

"When I recently watched Pictures from a Revolution, the film about her returning to Nicaragua ten years after she took the photographs, I kept asking myself who , with all her reticence and discretion, reminded me of?
I couldn't find the answer, and anyway, like each one of us, she's unique. The next morning it came to me. She reminded me not of another person, but of a sculpture: the only existing sculpture by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna. I looked again at the reproduction I have of it. Yes. It is not a question of a look-alike (although their physical stances are similar) but of that mysterious attitude which is a presence.
A presence is a source of energy offered to others
Yes. The sculpure figure has her right hand in the mouth of a lion that does not bite it, and in her left she holds a tower on a rock - a place - against her heart. She's defending both a faith and a place. Among the great artists of the Renaissance, Mantegna was the one perhaps most affected by a sense of History and the lesson of Antiquity. He wanted his figures to offer examples of human behavior, which would inspire the living in their wager that it was still possible - despite all the shit - to make life more human.
Her hand in the mouth of a lion, the other holding a place against her heart, upright, with an unflichting gaze, a camera slung across her shoulders, an example given and a wager made - all this is why Susan, although not a saint, made me think of Mantegna's sculpture. And now vice versa".

John Berger: opere
1926 Nasce a Londra.
• 1958 A Painter of Our Time
o Ritratto di pittore, Bompiani, 1961
• 1964 Corker's Freedom
• 1964 And Our Paces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
o E i nostri volti, amore mio, leggeri come foto, L'Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2002
• 1965 The Success and Failure of Picasso, [rif.]
o Splendori e miserie di Pablo Picasso, il Saggiatore, 1996
• 1967 A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor
o con: Jean Mohr
• 1969 The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays
• 1972 G. A Novel
o G., Garzanti, 1974
• 1972 Ways of Seeing, [rif.]
o Questione di sguardi, il Saggiatore, Milano, 1998
• 1975 A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe
o Un settimo uomo, Garzanti, 1976
o con: Jean Mohr
• 1980 About Looking
o Sul guardare, Sestante, 1995
• 1982 Another Way of Telling
o con: Jean Mohr
• 1985 The Sense of Sight
• 1987 A Question of Geography
• 1989 Goya's Last Portrait: The Painter Played Today
• 1991 Keeping a Rendezvous
• 1994 Pages of the Wound: Poems, Drawings, Photographs 1956-96
o Pagine della ferita, Greco & Greco, 1999
• 1995 To the Wedding: A Novel
o Festa di nozze, il Saggiatore, 1997
• 1996 Photocopies, Pantheon Books, New York, 1996
o Fotocopie
• 1996 G, Il Saggiatore
• 1998 Isabelle: A Life in Shots
• 1999 King: A Street Story
• 2000 Once in Europe, Bloomsbury, London, 2000
o Una volta in Europa
• 2001 The Shape of a Pocket
o Sacche di resistenza, Giano, 2003
• 2001 Selected Essays, Bloomsbury
o a cura di: Geoff Dyer
• 2003 Sul guardare, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, [rif.]

A cura di Nicola Dinoia

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