Fossati, Vittore
A participant from the late ’70s in the developments of Italian photography – as both artist and gallerist – Vittore Fossati (Alessandria, 1954) is of that generation of auteurs who, aware of the mutating features of the landscape, undertook a thorough revision of its representation, lending continuity to the so-called “Ghirrian school”.
An essential element of this continuity is the “disappearance of the auteur”, an approach that implies the impartial recording of the changeable and frequently contradictory facets of the late-industrial landscape, without any intention of influencing its interpretation: a vision that the photographer consigns to the observer, restricting himself to suggesting a possible “attitude of vision” with regard to what he himself perceived.
On close examination, there appears to be nothing casual in Fossati’s photographs, such is the geometric precision and rigorous perspective with which he frames the world. Perhaps in an attempt to decipher it, albeit with no programmatic pretence to succeeding. Fossati ironically defines himself as a S-paesaggista, an untranslatable play on words that modestly avoids underlining that an awareness of confusion is perhaps the first step on the path of rediscovering an orientation in this complex world.