Puglia 1978

Curator: This is Franco Fontana's "Puglia" from 1978. The photograph captures a landscape scene with incredible simplicity. What catches your eye first? Editor: It’s like staring into a Rothko! The saturated blocks of color, the flatness… I’m immediately thinking about how the artificiality of photographic color intervenes in the “realism” of the landscape tradition. It’s a strange mix. Curator: Yes! There's a deliberate flattening of perspective. The way the vibrant yellow field meets the intense blue sky, punctuated by those two almost cartoonish clouds… it’s like a child's drawing. There is also a sense of alienation. Editor: And think about the process – what kind of photographic technologies were available in 1978 to get such saturated color? Were there specific developing processes involved? These aren’t just landscapes; they’re material artifacts produced through specific technological means, raising questions of authenticity, mediation and commercial manufacture of such prints in editions for an art market. Curator: It’s the very industrial means by which the landscape is captured and printed as a flat object which perhaps allows a greater insight, no? Maybe that tension between a sort of idealized beauty and the tools that created it is the magic here. Editor: Exactly! How are we consuming this landscape? Is it simply an object of aesthetic contemplation or are we being asked to think critically about the relationship between nature, technology and consumerism? And, given the title is the actual place name of “Puglia”, Italy – is it also promoting and complicit with tourism to the area? Curator: I suppose in the end that’s a question for the individual standing here with us. It's strangely calming and unsettling, all at once. Thanks for chatting. Editor: My pleasure. An image ripe for material interrogation – loved it!