Achille Bonito Oliva together with Cecilia Casorati curated a exhibition called Squares of Rome where different italian photographer were assigned to shoot in different location of the eternal City. Good result and especially interesting to look at Gabriele Basilico or Olivero Barbero among the other here at Moca in Shanghai. Here a note from the curators:
Over the course of time the square has had various functions and signs, yet, it has always maintained as a constant its attitude of welcoming together and generating connections and correspondence of people. In Italy, the square had its beginnings at the start of the Middle Ages as the courtyard to the Cathedral or as the open space placed before the civil authorities and it thus became the barycentre of the development of the cities. It is with Michelangelo, but especially with Bernini, that the square assumes the modern characteristics as a place of relation between the urban structure and the architectural solution. The Baroque square, through the continuous exchange between external and internal, plays upon artifice: it is the stage for the representation of reality, work of art one may move through, symbol of opening towards the world. The fountains, the statues the monuments - located within the square - activate continual and suprising references to one another and they set the seal upon this new vision. Squares of Rome, by means of the placement of twenty large-format works of photographic art - that present a modern image of the most eloquent squares of Rome - and with the same number of sculptures, re-proposes the idea of the square as the space of dialogue and dynamic fulcrum of relations.
