In Pisa, between the Romanesque geometries of the Cathedral and the sloping profile of the Tower, a small construction site takes on an unexpected role. Next to the Palazzo dell’Opera del Duomo, a transient portion of the urban landscape becomes part of a visual and conceptual reflection. This is the context in which MORGANA - reflections of light and history, a photographic installation signed by Sonia Marrese, a freelance photographer active in the Pisa area, takes shape. The project is grafted onto a temporary structure, used for maintenance work, but is not limited to a decorative function. In fact, the intent of the intervention is not to mask the construction site or reduce its visual impact. On the contrary, the base of the scaffolding is used as a support for a series of large-format photographic images that interact directly with the environment, without overpowering or hiding it.
“I observe what I see, I enter inside what strikes my gaze and my emotions and through the shot I stop that moment, trying to return a poetic, magical, dreamlike image.”
Marrese’s photographs reproduce well-known glimpses of the historic center, the Tower, the Cathedral, the stone pavements, fragments of the sky, but they do so by filtering reality through reflective surfaces, plays of light and liquid compositions. These are reflections captured in puddles, stained glass windows, shiny surfaces, in which the image is fragmented, duplicated, deformed. In a place that has represented the material and symbolic preservation of the city for centuries, the work suggests an alternative possibility: that of seeing the construction site as an opportunity to activate a different gaze. The construction site thus becomes a narrative space. MORGANA fits into the urban fabric without creating friction. It does not invade the space, but uses its folds to insert itself as an active element. The title itself, evocative but not illustrative, suggests an ambiguous yet transparent vision. The figure of Morgana, in literary and mythological tradition, is a symbol of illusion, metamorphosis, deceptive perception: here it is reread as a metaphor for photography, capable of returning an image of reality that is both adherent and transfigured.
The prints that cover the structure amplify its details. Each image proposes a fragment of the city caught through the filter of reflection. Some shots reveal the Leaning Tower reflected in a puddle, others show the geometric pattern of stone slabs bathed in rain, and still others offer a distorted image of facades, with surfaces broken by light or moved by the wind. The overall effect is that of a suspended narrative, in which the monument, usually perceived in its stable monumentality, becomes a changeable, liquid object in constant transformation. The use of reflection allows for a layered fruition, in which the viewer is invited to ask questions about what he sees, how he sees it, and the value he places on what he habitually passes through without pausing.
Sonia Marrese matured in a family context related to analog photography. In the 1970s, her father, active as an advertising photographer, had turned a truck into a traveling darkroom. The hybrid space, halfway between a technical place and a laboratory of visions, represented a starting point and a constant reference for the artist. Elements of continuity with that dimension can be found in his work: the attention to composition, the centrality of the photographic process as an emotional exploration, the search for a gaze that does not limit itself to recording the visible but returns its subtle tensions. Marrese has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Italy and has published photographic works in which reflection on the urban landscape is intertwined with a visual sensibility that tends toward the oneiric, without losing contact with reality.
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| Reflections among scaffolding: Sonia Marrese's installation in Pisa's Piazza del Duomo |
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