Massimo Pedriali - Portfolio Contest Winner

The Italian photographer Massimo Pedriali’s series Tresigallo: Metaphysical City is rife with intriguing cultural, historical and political resonance. A rural municipality dating back to medieval times, Tresigallo was completely rebuilt under the direction of Italy’s Minister of Agriculture Edmondo Rossoni between 1927–1934. This occurred during the nationwide architectural makeover of Rome and other cities at the behest of Benito Mussolini’s vision for a unified fascist Italy. Fascist architecture, an offshoot of early 20th century modernism, was characterized by imposing scale, dramatic sweep, symmetry and simplicity, all designed to project centralized power at the expense of individualism.

Rossoni, who was born in Tresigallo, had a more utopian conception, a people-centered vision at odds with Mussolini’s fascist state, which he brought to fruition with engineer Carlo Frighi. (Rossoni eventually distanced himself from Mussolini’s leadership.) Many of Tresigallo’s streets, buildings and squares remain intact today.

Two decades earlier, Giorgio de Chirico was creating his iconic paintings of ghostly architecture and empty plazas, rendered in disconcerting perspectives and imbued with haunting chiaroscuro—imagery that arguably influenced to some degree the modernist architecture of the 1930s. It’s fair to wonder if Rossoni and Frighi were inspired to any degree by de Chirico’s surreal cityscapes. Pedriali ponders the dynamic from the opposite perspective: “I have always wondered if de Chirico ever went to Tresigallo,” he says. “He would have seen aspects of his paintings from the first 20 years of the 20th century transformed into actual architecture. I do not believe that there was a connection between Rossoni or his architects and de Chirico, but perhaps a metaphysical synergy united them in their visions.”

Pedriali lived in Tresigallo in the 1980s, but didn’t take note of the architecture then. “It was the village of my youthful amusements,” he says. “A couple of years ago I returned to the village with open eyes, and I saw in the structures the paintings of Master de Chirico. My photographic intent was to evoke the enigmatic nature and perspectives of his paintings. The lockdowns, unfortunately ongoing, contributed to the atmosphere in the sense that the city streets and squares were virtually empty.”

For this series, Pedriali shot square negatives with a medium-format camera, the tight, balanced format accentuating the graphic elements in his viewfinder. He rarely shoots otherwise. “The square represents harmony, and architectural subjects lend themselves particularly well to this format.” The film grain helped bring out the tactile quality of Tresigallo’s structures. To capture contrast of de Chirico’s lighting, Pedriali used infrared film and a red filter and photographed in broad daylight.

Technique aside, it’s Pedriali’s eye for perspective that really animates these images. “Farmers’ Cooperative” perfectly captures the bold design and enigmatic atmosphere of Tresigallo’s public spaces. The arrowhead-like pavement marking in the foreground (which seems to be slicing into the black tarmac) immediately arrests the eye, then leads it past an array of traffic signs to the hulking, dilapidated building in the middle-distance. The seamless juxtaposition of triangles, squares and circles creates a dynamic visual energy at odds with the atmospheric stasis Pedriali has conjured. The image is strongly redolent of a vanished social and political era.

The receding perspective of “Arcades,” meanwhile, feels like an homage to de Chirico’s 1914 “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street.” Again, Pedriali deftly contrasts and conflates intersecting lines, tones, textures and shapes into a harmonious visual whole, yet still manages to create an emotional tenor slightly askew, tempered more by darkness than light.

This obsession with atmosphere and mystery is genuine and organic. “All my images come from my own state of mind, from moments I live,” Pedriali says. “It is in the solitude and silence that I like to get lost in watching.”

Fact File
Ferrara, Italy
massimopedriali.com
massimo.pedriali@gmail.com
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