Panorama

A major solo exhibition in Turin looks at the Neapolitan photographer’s 20-year career. We saw it in the impromptu company of someone immortalised ten years ago, along with his high-school classmates.

Frowning and with a fixed scowl as if to say “Get on with it, I’m uncomfortable.” – one teenage face in the middle of a handful of others and with a tangle of emotions in his gaze that is hard to transfer from camera to picture. “I’ve never liked being photographed, does it show?” This question asked by a male voice in the hushed silence of the room prompts me to suddenly turn around as if released by a spring. “Especially class photographs”. The speaker is a well-dressed young man, not very tall and fairly anonymous looking, like the background figures in a painting. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump”, he explains. “I felt your eyes on me.”

Francesco Jodice, *Ritratti di classe. Torino*, 2005

He comes closer with a fixed expression but never taking his eyes off the photograph hanging on the wall behind me. It is a photo he knows well. “I was 12 and keener than ever to grow up. A habitual runaway”, he says pointing to the sullen face of the young boy he has left behind. “Waiting still kills me. Time, you know…”, he turns to look me in the eye. I nod as his schoolboy image becomes vague and vanishes, replaced by the 2016 reality before me. “Was it your class?” I ask to cover my embarrassment. “Yes, but only for that year”, and he quickly says the surnames from the register as if reciting a tongue twister.

“In September… My father … I never finished high school”, he cuts short. “What were you so drawn to?” he asks. “The way your eyes move,” I fire back. “and that crutch under the bench, behind your untied shoes.” He smiles bitterly and we look at the photograph again. “That one down there,” he says, pointing to a docile-looking boy with his hands cupped on his knees, “he didn’t get on with his adoptive family. He went to sea, cooking on cruise ships, a few years ago; he travels the seas.” “But that one,” and he points to a ruddy face covered with freckles, “that one always smelt of frying oil. He’s opened a laundry just behind here.”

His eyes flicker. “She …,” his voice quivers at the sight of a small heart-shaped face, “I was in love with her … I never saw her again after that summer.” The respectful silence demanded by certain memories follows. He sighs. “It is a complex world you know … it is hard to navigate.” I nod in agreement. He realises that more photographs of other classes are hanging on the walls (all entitled Class pictures, “snapshots of the future Italy” says the explanation, part of a series dated 2005–09). He waves his arms like a compass needle over that expanse of amused, darkened and cheeky faces. “You see a good or bad copy of yourself in photographs”, he murmurs, “with a memory gap, as if we weren’t us anymore.”

He lets the words register and then changes the subject: “When he came to take our picture … it was the end of the school year… I didn’t know he was a famous photographer.” I smile. “Do you know him?” he asks. I nod. “What’s he like?” I think for a moment. “A brilliant orator,” springs to mind, “anything but sparing. Gifted with an innate and total involvement in his work.” “He’s visited the most unlikely places.” he exclaims. “The photos I saw at the entrance …” and as he describes them I mentally leaf through the 150 metropolises of What We Want (a project commenced in 1995 and of which just one photograph is intentionally displayed here. The others are flattened into two huge albums), from the salty Aral Sea to Tokyo skyscrapers and a terrace in Dubai.

“Lovely”, he says, “but I would never live there, in those places I mean… They look as if they have air-conditioning draughts running through them.” I agree and say that I am of the same opinion. “That view of Capri…,” clicking his tongue towards the corridor. “So familiar and yet so alien… The island is like a cork and the sea … it looks as if it’s made of linoleum.” “It’s a nocturnal photograph,” I say. His faces lights up. “Really?” I am still thinking of the sea, the Tyrrhenian that becomes Mediterranean and the Mediterranean that solidifies, the agglutinated boundary of liquid geography in the video installation Solid Sea (presented at Documenta 11, in 2002, and showing in the neighbouring room). “Really”, I repeat, “long exposure times.”

My technical reply seems not to convince him and, as if caught up in a sudden zeal, he pulls the exhibition press release out of his trouser pocket and starts reading out loud: “The “Panorama” exhibition, hosted by Camera – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia – narrates the 20-year career of photographer and filmmaker Francesco Jodice (Naples, 1967)”, he skips from line to line, “…Curated by Francesco Zanot… Exhibition design by the architect Roberto Murgia… an exploration of the contemporary geopolitical scenario and the ensuing social and urban changes, focusing on the topics”, and now he speaks every word clearly, “participation, networking, anthropometry, storytelling and investigation.”

He catches his breath. “The Room (2009–16) is a space lined with pages from Italian newspapers covered with a layer of black paint, with just a few words left visible to illustrate a year in Italian life.” He closes his eyes trying to recall some symbolic word he must have read on the sooty walls of the room: “revolution, mother-in-law, Masterchef”. He opens them again and continues reading, “The film Hikikomori (2004) explores a phenomenon of voluntary confinement… The Secret Traces (1998) is the product of a number of photographic tailings of ordinary individuals as they go about their daily lives… Citytellers (2006–10) is a film trilogy on some symbolic global geopolitical contexts…”

He pauses and looks up at me. “He’s interested in such a wide range of things”, he notes. I shrug my shoulders. “Let’s say he has his own way of awarding laurels.” I remember his words: “It is a complex world … hard to navigate.” He looks at me inquisitively. “More than by the complete work…” I try saying, “he is excited by the situation, the picture, the narrative mechanism that spawns it. In this sense, metabolism is a word he uses often.” Seeing him frown, I search for better words to explain myself but he finds them first, mobile phone in hand, on Wikipedia: “Metabolism, from the Greek change”. I choose to add nothing more.

We hear footsteps above our heads and strain our ears as we stare up at the ceiling. “Students”, he says. “There’s a high school upstairs,” he tells me still looking up. “Really?” I ask surprised. He nods. “Someone told me this building housed the Kingdom of Italy’s first state school. This room … It’s a classroom.” A bell rings upstairs and his eyes shift outside the window. Turin has a starched blue sky. “It’s June and the school term is almost finished”, he says laconically. I know he is thinking what I am: a photographer behind the camera and a class posing. We look at each other without speaking and both laugh.

until 14 August 2016
Francesco Jodice: Panorama
Camera – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia
via delle Rosine 18, Turin

Panorama

A major solo exhibition in Turin looks at the Neapolitan photographer’s 20-year career. We saw it in the impromptu company of someone immortalised ten years ago, along with his high-school classmates.

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