Cities and the sky
“Whoever arrives at Tecla, sees little of the city, behind the fences of boards, the sackcloth shelters, the scaffolding, the metal reinforcements, the wooden bridges suspended on ropes or supported by trestles, the ladders, the pylons. To the question “why does the construction of Tecla continue so long?” the inhabitants without ceasing to hoist buckets, to drop plumb lines, to move up and down long brushes “why don’t you start the destruction” they answer. And asked if they fear that as soon as the scaffolding is removed, the city begins to crumble and fall apart, they quickly add up, in a low voice: “Not just the city”. If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone applies his eye to the crack of a fence, he sees cranes pulling on other cranes, frames that cover other frames, beams that support other beams. “What is the meaning of your building?” question. “What is the purpose of a city under construction if not a city? Where is the plan you follow, the project?” “We will show you as soon as the day ends; now we can’t stop” they answer. Work ceases at sunset. Night falls on the construction site. It is a starry night. “Here’s the plan” they say.”
Italo Calvino
PAESAGGI TRANSITORI di Annamaria Uccella
Una riflessione sul rapporto tra i cantieri e la città attraverso le immagini è insieme la registrazione della straordinaria efficacia, anche estetica, di situazioni destinate per definizione a scomparire ed il racconto di ciò che via via si determina nei luoghi in trasformazione. Le immagini dai cantieri sono testimonianza partecipe di momenti in evoluzione, “la costruzione”, e rappresentano la traccia di qualcosa che a lavori ultimati nessuno avrà più modo di vedere. I cantieri, per loro natura, elementi inediti e temporanei del panorama urbano, sparsi nella città, dialogano tra loro e condividono un’immagine precaria e multipla.
TEMPORARIES LANDSCAPES – UNDER CONSTRUCTION by Annamaria Uccella
A reflection on the relationship between construction sites and the city through images is at the same time the recording of the extraordinary effectiveness, also aesthetic, of situations destined by definition to disappear and the story of what gradually takes place in the places in transformation. The images from the construction sites bear witness to moments in evolution, “the construction” and represent the trace of something that no one will be able to see when the work is completed. The construction sites, by their very nature, unprecedented and temporary elements of the urban landscape, scattered throughout the city, interact with each other and share a precarious and multiple image.
NAPOLI – ITALY
Nello specifico della realtà napoletana, tali caratteristiche sono vissute come “normalità”. Non è, infatti, il disagio la sensazione che si percepisce, bensì l’ulteriore stimolo all’arte del vivere di un popolo che coglie, con la sua creatività, un’opportunità. La fotografia sensibile racconta, quindi, di presenze umane, di chi lavora nel cantiere, ma anche di chi, ambulante, organizza improbabili spazi di vendita; di passanti indifferenti e di turisti curiosi del passato che emerge dal sottosuolo e del futuro che il cantiere promette; di enormi teli con belle immagini della Napoli da cartolina, accartocciati su se stessi, che diventano metafora di un luogo che è stato mito; di macchine da lavoro dall’aspetto alieno che dialogano con composte facciate ottocentesche; del traffico che si frantuma sulle sponde del cantiere, che, come vuoto temporaneo, pare escludere e nel contempo attrarre l’intorno.
Specifically in the Neapolitan reality, these characteristics are experienced as “normality”. It is not, in fact, the discomfort, the sensation that is perceived, but the further stimulus to the art of living of a people that seizes, with its creativity, an opportunity. Sensitive photography therefore tells of human presences, of those who work on the construction site, but also of those on the road, staging improbable sales spaces; of indifferent passers-by and curious tourists of the past emerging from the underground and of the future that the yard promises; of huge sheets with beautiful postcard images of Naples, crumpled up on themselves that become a metaphor for a place that was a myth and alien-looking work machines that interact with composed nineteenth-century facades and then the traffic that shatters on the banks of the construction site, which as a temporary void seems to exclude and at the same time attract the surroundings.
AMSTERDAM – NETHERLANDS
BUDAPEST – HUNGARY
CHICAGO – ILLINOIS – USA
NEW YORK – NEW YORK – USA
WASHINGTON D.C. – USA
ARIZONA – USA
