In his photography, Luciano Romano combines two of his greatest passions: the first is for the theatrical environment whilst the second is for architectural compositions. His first works, in 1991, were the fruit, one might say, of particular combinations that have been gathered in several volumes which have been published by famous editors such as Franco Maria Ricci, Taschen, Skira, Electa and Treccani. After his symbolic study of light, Luciano Romano, since 2001, has delved into an impassioned research into the representation of space.

The photographer has been on the receiving end of important international and Italian awards and professional recognition since the beginning of the new millennium. Since then, he has undertaken a sequence of significant collaborations with artists such as Shirin Neshat. Over the years, he has also received a whole host of commissions from the Mibact (the ministry for Heritage, Culture and Tourism), from Unesco Italia and for the Cantiere d’Autore from the MAXXI in Rome. At the present time, his works are kept in both public as well as private collections.

Orlando Tales is hosting, two collections by Luciano Romano: the splendid photographs that accompany the editorial – dedicated to his reinterpretation (from a modern perspective) of Virginia Woolf novel, Orlando– and the images, of stairwells, that you will have the opportunity to enjoy, on these very pages, all of which have been dedicated to signor Romano.

The stairs have fascinated us since, in an ideal way, they are the link that takes our readers from one floor to another in our “magazine-cum-hotel” of the mind – all of it waiting to be inhabited to the full by our readers, going from one floor to the next and vice-versa as much as they desire. It is the story, as a matter of fact, of these stairs that we have asked the photographer to talk about, to explain to us the significance that they hold for him and the deep-reaching reason behind his constant interest in this specific architectural element.

Stairs are the perfect metaphor of the actions of human beings who transform nature and build the world around them in their very image. They tend towards the Absolute, they challenge the law of gravity starting off from the heaviness and the opaqueness of stone in order to look up at the bright light of the sky. Tied, as they are, to the earth, the steps that follow rhythmically one after the other, are an evident demonstration of the constructive intelligence of homo faber, as well as being a concrete sign of the ambition to overcome all of homo faber’s limits.

Inspired as they are by a set of complex geometrical structures, by the fantastic forms of Nature, by monumental set designs in order to underline the distance between Mankind and the Divine and between Humility and power, stairs preserve an intimate and direct relationship with our body which crosses over them and which measures them with our steps.

Going up – or down – a flight of stairs is an experience that sometimes provokes a sense of anxiety, of expectation and of suspension, quite similar to when we cross into a place of perfect transition, a sort of a border zone.

Stairs are the threshold of what we will become, of our success and of our progress. They are constructions which have been created to be a functional connection between the different floors of our conscience – incredible mystical spirals, places of the spirit that carry us back to the Stairway of Heaven of which Jacob dreamt, the passage between the Material and the Soul that is rendered so obvious by the conflicting alternation of light and shade.

I have always been attracted by the spiral shapes described in these images. This geometrical form never brings about (not even) a hint of indifference. It is always captivating and is intimately linked to our perceptive mechanisms to the point of becoming a reflex of the subconscious and a hypnotic vision.

A possible explanation for this power of attraction is that this particular shape is ever-recurring in Nature, from the spirals of a small shell to the streaming down of water into a whirlpool, to the position of cosmic material in the galaxy. It is an absolute form which is the basis of the laws of physics and it belongs to us, intimately.

The image that captivates us has always been the reflection of something that our mind has already possessed. It is like a sound echoing; something that brings to mind the idea of an archive for our memory. This is what makes it recognisable. Nowadays, we would say that it is a “key word” that triggers our own personal search engines.

It is as if our minds perceived a fragment of reality and that they classified it by means of a recognition device: in front of our eyes, the steps, the cracks in the plaster, the marble and the balustrades described down to the tiniest amount of detail. The mind, however, shows us, first of all, an eye, a shell, a whirlpool or a galaxy.

These are images which, quite intentionally, leave a little gap that enables the gaze of the spectator to fill in.

Photography is one of those languages which is better suited to describing the process of the transfiguration between the real and the imaginary. It captures the gaze, and it bewilders it in a subtle game between the lucid representation of the visible world and the dream world.

In the freeze frames, elements of reality let the dizziness of mental images stride ahead, thus revealing forms and shapes that chase each other at a hypnotic pace, flights of stairs which wind themselves up towards a dazzling glare or sink into the darkness of a bottomless chasm. Physical spaces which allude to states of the soul and spirit. All so inevitably.

 Luciano Romano

ARTISTIC BIOGRAPHY

Collaborations with publishing houses:

•     Since 1991: Franco Maria Ricci, Taschen, Skira, Electa, Treccani

Photography awards:

•     2003: Atlante Italiano 003 (the Mibact, the DARC (Contemporary Art and Architecture Direction), the Triennale, Milan) 
•      2007: nomination for the Prix BMW-Paris Photo
•     2014: finalist in the Hasselblad Masters 

Participation in Italian and international exhibitions:

•     2006: X Architecture Biennale, Venice, Workscape
•     2010: MADRE Museum, Naples, Napoli O’Vero
•     2010: MAXXI Museum, Rome, Cantiere d’Autore
•     2010: Shanghai Expo and the New York Armory, Italy of the Cities for P. Greenaway
•     2011: European Photography, Reggio Emilia
•     2012: Solo Exhibition, Lo Sguardo Obliquo, at the Studio Trisorio

Collaborations with artists and projects: 

•    2014: collaborated with Shirin Neshat on the permanent installation for the Toledo Underground Station in Naples, also exhibited at the MAMM in Moscow for the Photobiennale 2014 curated by Olga Sviblov
•    2015: took part in Sconfinamenti#3, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva (the Festival de Due Mondi, Spoleto)
•    2017: his volume entitled, Le regard oblique, came out with a preface by the artist, Giulio Paolini
•    2018: collaborated once again with Shirin Neshat on a commission from the National Portrait Gallery of London, taking the portrait of the Nobel Prize Winner, Malala Yousafzai
•    2019: inaugurated his installation, Song ’e mare, in the Scampia, Naples, Underground Station

Where you can find his work:

•     The MAXXI, Rome
•     The MADRE, Naples
•     The Banco di Napoli Foundation 
•     The Reggia di Caserta Palace, Caserta, near Naples
•     The ICCD (The Central Institute for Catalogues and Documentation), part of the DARC
•     The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation