80’s DARK PORTRAITS curated by Matteo Di Castro and Paola Paleari november 26 2013 – jenaury 5 2014 opening tuesday november 26 , 7-11 pm photo shooting byMartina Monopoli DJ- set by Paolo Teta s.t. foto libreria galleria via degli ombrellari, 25 Roma In the early Eighties, photographer Dino Ignani started to focus his research on those young people who identified itself with a new musical aesthetics, but also and mostly with a new style and a new look: the dark wave. In the video-bars and in the discos of that period, particularly in Rome (from Black Out to the Uonna Club to the unforgettable Piper), but also in private parties, Dino Ignani would prepare an ad hoc set, and would invite all those presents to have their portraits taken. The result is a gallery of four-hundred black and white images, displayed for the first time in an exhibition which aims at bringing out the documentary vocation of the original project. On the walls what we are faced with is a selection of eighty portraits, printed both in photographic paper, and as a theatre bill, reminiscent of the multiple forms of ‘bill posting’ that our images can take. What is most striking in Ignani’s photographs is precisely his choice to to offer us a neutral, detached representation of the new look of the Eighties: Roberto D’Agostino writes: “In these photographs by Dino Ignani we find the Italy of the Eighties: young and youthful, unique and glaring, unbelievable and spectacular. Above all, it is the Italy of the ‘look’ that we find in this gallery of portraits of young people, it is the image of their youth, their tension, their vitality, their confusion, their effrontery, their zest for life and their fear of falling […]. Dino Ignani’s portraits are the materialization of an anxious search for identity, seduction, communication. These faces are looking at us and saying: Look! I have an image, therefore I am”. Dino Igani was born and lives in Rome. His interest in photography dates back to the seventies, with a particular focus on long-term documentary projects. Among these, the series Intimi ritrati, dedicated to Italian poets, introduced in 1987 by Enzo Siciliano and Diego Mormorio and which has now become part of the collections of the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea di Cinisello Balsamo. s.t. foto libreria galleria via degli ombrellari, 25 Roma 00193 | +39 0664760105 | info@stsenzatitolo.it | www.stsenzatitolo.it