roberto – New Landscape Photography

RobyBianchi.it

The T7 line connects Villejuif to Athis Mons and carries about 30,000 people a day. The French landscape that flows beyond the windows marks the daily life of its people and determines its rhythm.

The succession of images during the route create a constantly moving urban landscape, whose outlines are not well defined.

Our sight — and therefore the camera — captures everything that appears in front of us without the time to provide a selection. It’s not the aesthetic beauty of the place that moves us, rather it’s the several sets that appear and disappear by simply leaving elusive, yet recognizable tracks — since they belong to our visual and mental knowledge.

Roads, parking lots, malls, offices, hotels, work and leisure places impose themselves in what seems at first an insignificant scene, giving life to a sort of game in which one tries to put together the several visual pieces of a story that repeats itself but which constantly changes at the same time.

— Roberto Bianchi, Sanremo, Italy

www.RobertoBeat.blogspot.it

The first time I went there I was seven. It was with my grandfather.

Afterwords, with my friends, by car, hanging out, stopping at old churches and pine woods, talking, smoking, arguing about the next direction to drive. We went there to discover hidden inns, unusual views, fresh smells of mushrooms and mildews. It was long time ago.

I think there is such a place in the memory of each of us. Something particularly meaningful. Maybe, not far from the town we live, a place in the suburb, in countryside, a road across the mountains. A “B” road near Genoa, for example. The route SP 67 runs from Apparizione, a fraction on the borderline of the town of Genoa, to Calcinara, four houses in the inland. Around here, “Dark Nord Wind” is the name given to the North Wind when it carries rain and storms.

I have been driving this road many time, from 2008 to 2010. I took pictures. Looking for what I left behind: bad weather, dark paths, shadows of old friends, blurred memories. I went deeper into the forest, descending paths, looking through trees in the mists. Trying to grab the mystery of a place I only found the uncertainty of a road still to be covered to the end.

“I’m running towards nothing, again and again and again” (Simonetta Roncaglia)

— Roberto Schena, Milan & Genoa, Italy