"Wonderwomen - Portraits"
Cascina Cuccagna, Milan, Italy
1 - 4 December 2015
Max Cardelli's thirty photographic portraits dialogue with the seventeenth-century rooms of Cascina Cuccagna. Five rooms to contain a very long gaze, the gaze that is formed by a deep feeling, the result of a curious wandering about and surfacing to re-enter soon after, like an animal in the protective warmth of the den. One must be a balancing photographer to capture this presence without thawing it or inducing it into the game of seduction, so present instead in contemporary photographic portraiture. The gaze is the thread that draws a path of intense photographs, rarefied in form, perfect in chromatic harmony, resembling a series of religious icons, so much attention and care emerge from these magnetic portraits. Few images, bathed in an aura so strong that they occupy the space around them. A magical atmosphere that makes us discover Max Cardelli's long dedication to the inner universe of women absorbed in their astonished humanity. (Silvana Turzio)