MARCELLO GRASSI

Capturing the Timeless Presence of History

“Photography is by nature a documentary art.”

August Sander

Introduction:

The photography of Marcello Grassi could be described as the one of cinematographic archeological tales. With more than forty years of research of historical artifacts and sites all around Europe, Grassi’s photography is immediately recognizable for its monochrome of blacks and high-contrast tones, attention given to the anatomy, and specific angles that evoke interest to the story that is given beyond the image. In Grassi’s photography, statues move and live a life of their own in a staggering silence, not just as living witnesses of the past, but also as reminders of the eternal continuum of time. Contemplating Grassi’s photographs, brings to memory the famous words of Heraclitus about the infinity of time: “Out of life, comes death; and out of death, life. Out of the young, the old; and out of the old, the young. Out of waking, sleep; and out of sleep, waking. The stream of creation and dissolution never stops.”

Marcello Grassi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1960. His interested in classical civilizations goes back to 1985, when he embarked on a “visual excavation” of Etruscan sites, cities and tombs. In 1999, he exposed at the Musée Réattu in Arles in the south of France, and published the volume Etruria, edited by Frederico Motta. In 1992, he was commissioned to photograph the archeological artifacts of the Courtyard and Gallery of Marlbles at the Musei Civici in Reggio Emilia. From 1994 to 1996 he has photographed the city of Arles, famous for its Roman and Romanesque art. In 1997, he produced a series on the local site for the archeological museum in Nice-Cimiez and in 1998 he photographed the Cistercian abbey in Maulbronn, Germany. In 2002, he started working on a project about Luzzara with Fabrizio Orsi, with photographs featured in a publication Luzzara Cinquant’anni e più…, , a photographic tribute dedicated to the small Emilian town of Luzzara, its inhabitants and its history, edited by Skira in 2003.

Some other important projects include the collaborative work with Fabrizio Orsi on the Identity of the cities in Europe in 2006, in Berlin, a group show exhibition curated by Christian Lacroix in 2013–Mon île de Montmajour in southern France, and the Herculaneum series exhibited in 2013 for the tenth edition of Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia. One of his recent works includes the sequence of photographs dedicated to Antonio Canova, master of the great neoclassical sculpture, photographed in his temple, the Canova Museum in Possagno. From 2019, Marcello Grassi is exclusively represented by Galleria IAGA Contemporary Art in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Ana: Looking over your biography, I read that you have been interested in photography since a young age, under the influence of your father? What was your very first photo, your very first device and the memory associated with it?

M. Grassi: Indeed, I have had the chance to be accompanied since my adolescence in this fascinating and magical world of photography by my father Corrado, a great enthusiast. The first important photo I remember was taken in black and white in a rural area of the Emilian Apennines with a Nikon F2 camera (which I still keep with my first camera, an Agfa ISO-PAK C1 which edited film in 126). The happy memory is that of a bygone era that will never return, where life was linked to simple things.

Ana: Where does your interest in classical civilizations, Etruscans, and history in particular come from?

M. Grassi: The interest for history is innate and in flourished at school. I feel the wish to preserve heritage and memory through photography, and the complex construction of an image which extends, as much as possible, the magnetic wave, the vital flow of those who preceded us and their testimonies.

Ana: Thinking about the title of one of your exhibitions, “The Archeology of Sight” (Archeologia dello Squadro), I wonder do you consider yourself as a contemporary archeologist?

M. Grassi: I consider myself simply as a photographer, attached to a photographic technique which manages to look at the present, and is also made up of ancient testimonies, creating a different vision, that most people do not see, probably an archaeologist in my way of perception.

Ana: From 1994 to 1996 you photographed Arles, a city with more than 100 buildings protected as historic monuments. What were the most memorable impressions/memories you took away from this experience?

M. Grassi: Due to its rich history, Arles was a good testing ground. It is a city photographed by many photographers, a city famous for the photographic exhibition Les Recontres de la Photographie, the National school of photography, the Réattu Museum, the Baths of Constantine, the Theater Antique, the Arles Antique Museum, especially the thousand-year-old necropolis of Alyscamps. For me, it is also linked to many friendships, as the one with the art critic and historian Robert Pujade, Michèle Moutashar- chief curator of Heritage and director of the Réattu Museum for 39 years, and Alain Charron, the main curator of the Departmental Museum – Arles antique. It is also a place where I had my first solo-exhibition in a museum outside Italy, in Réattu Museum. On this occasion the volume Etruria was published, in 1999, by the editor Frederico Motta, with texts written by Michèle Moutashar and Charles-Henri Favrod. These are all beautiful memories that no one could ever erase.

Ana: You have also photographed in various sites and museums in France. Apart from Arles, how would you describe your connection with France, more particularly in terms of source of research or artistic inspirations?

M. Grassi: Thanks to the invitation of Christian Lacroix, I exhibited in the collective exhibition Mon île de Montmajour, and in other collective and personal exhibitions thanks to the Réattu Museum in Arles and at the Nicéphore Niepce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône. The close bond with France started in 1983 when I had heart surgery in Paris for a double valve replacement, by the dear Arrigo Lessana. You could say that I was born twice: in 1960 in Reggio Emilia, in 1983 in Paris; moreover, at school I studied French and not English, and having attended the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles for a few years undoubtedly strengthened this relationship. Archaeological resources of collections and sites in France are of a primary importance, same as is the attention paid to the photography, and to my work in particular, with methods that are less bureaucratic, more direct, more professional and highly respectable. My last professional exchanges took place in recent months with the Art Workshops of the Réunion de Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais, where I photographed in 2023.

Ana: I imagine that working on-site also implies collaborative work at times. Apart from Fabrizio Orsi, with whom you worked on the projects Luzzara and Identity of the Cities of Europe, were there other researchers or photographers who have contributed to your work so far?

M. Grassi: My occupation with photography started in the 70s of the last century, in a time when there was no internet. I educated myself by devouring photographic magazines bought by my father, attending exhibitions and spending countless hours reading books, first in the library and once that I had enough resources, buying them for my own personal collection. Through these media, now considered unfortunately as old-fashioned, I discovered a few authors whose images inspired my subsequent journey: Herbert List (the light), Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray (surrealism, mass healing on stage), Ralph Gibson (the black one) and Robert Mapplethorpe (the classic body). These are my “Gods of Olympus”, those that I often look at and consider so inaccessible to us common mortals, merely acting as blowers. I am very close to Fabrizio Orsi, and I also like to involve him in my apparent madness.

Ana: In one of your Italian interviews, I read a beautiful sentence that you said, about photography being a shared intimate narrative. In a technical way, by what means do you make us feel this narrative?

M. Grassi: The choice of light is of fundamental importance. Among other things, I don’t use artificial light and I don’t edit files that I receive from the camera, I develop them as we did in the past, in the black room. I adapt to the situation of the moment, or I seek the moment of the situation. Therefore, this intimate story that is expressed through the photography, must reach the subject/viewer in its highest possible level, in large format (up to 150×150 cm) on Fine Art paper so that personal memory mechanisms can be fully awakened. A specific technique can of course serve in obtaining the end result, but it is not an end on its own.

Ana: With over 40 years of photographic experience, do you have any particularly memorable experience to share or an achievement of which you are particularly proud ?

M. Grassi: I am very proud of the human relationships that I have consolidated over the years, thanks to photography. Notably with Charles-Henri Favrod, founder and first director of the museum Elysée in Lausanne, who unfortunately passed away in 2017. He instantly believed in my work, and our exchange of letters over the years are worth far more than any other interest. I also have an excellent direct relationship with Alberto Perobelli, artistic director of IAGA Contemporary Art, a gallery that represents me exclusively. Clearly, there are always new dreams hidden in a drawer, and I hope to start extracting from them in the beginning of next year.

Ana:

How would you define a successful photograph?

M. Grassi:

I would define it as a photograph that arrives immediately without the need for too many written words to support it, without too many mental shortcuts. THE photographer is a kind of screenwriter who has a script in his hands already written by others, and from which he must derive and produce his own version.

Ana:

Could we argue the human body is one of your fascinations, also a subject of research on its own?

M. Grassi:

The human body is certainly part of my fascination, as I mentioned earlier the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. Curiously, this interest was born from reading, in 1985, the year when I started investigating Etruscan sites, with the text written by Marguerite Yourcenar ‘Il tempo Grande Scultore’. The story deals with the life of a statue from the moment the sculptor draws it from inanimate matter: in reality I believe that the matter speaks of all of us, of the human race, of our destiny, the statues are merely a pretext.

Ana:

Are there any projects that you would like to realize in the near future ?

M. Grassi:

A project that is currently ongoing concerns the Italian and European plaster galleries. : I hope to add more photographs to this upcoming series. Others are in progress (agreements with museums and individuals), but I can not share details for the moment.