Linda Fregni Nagler “Things That Death Cannot Destroy” with vocal performance by Keri Neff
Linda Fregni Nagler is a photographer based in Milan. We met through events held at/by O’. Apart from Linda’s prints, she started a this series of magick latern projections which utilize her huge glass plate slide collection ranging from the 18oos to the early/mid 1900s. Through meticulous archiving she has uncovered themes in ‘old’ photography like the surreal dipiction of ‘reality’ in the newly discovered Japan of the 1800s, or the masking techniques (e.g. draping a black cloth over their heads as if no one would notice them) used by photographers to hide mothers holding their babies. She has exhibited her photography internationally and continues to utilize her archives as inspiration to reproduce the sets and techniques in fine detail.
So far we have done the projections in Milan, Grenoble and Monaco. The series explores the archiving of collective memory. The juxtaposition of the images runs from the sublime to the absurd and leaves the viewer to make their own associations and emotional connections. My part in these performances is to read what is written on the original glass plate slides. This includes the archival numbers and often unclear texts. The photographer may not have really known what they were taking pictures of nor did they have ways of naming things except with the language of the times. Sometimes the language may seem outdated or even inaccurate and on many occasions has brought up censorship and revisionism discussions. Today we often forget that we are bombarded with imagery and that everything has been catalogued and documented. The language of photography seems to be taken for granted, with instant posts going globally viral in minutes. Hoaxes are harder to come by or easily recognised. Almost everyone has access to photo editing tools. When the medium was new, the language had not yet been established. This spectacle, through Linda’s sensitivity and the vocalist’s (my) interpretation/non interpretation, takes the viewer back to a sense of wonder and amazement at the world we live in as seen through the lens. A magical intimate experience.
THINGS THAT DEATH CANNOT DESTROY – PART 4
SINDROME ITALIANE -GRENOBLE, FRANCE – OCTOBER, 2010
THINGS THAT DEATH CANNOT DESTROY -PART 4
GALLERIA MONICA DE CARDENAS,
MILAN , ITALY – JUNE 22, 2011
THINGS THAT DEATH CANNOT DESTROY – PART 5- LE SILENCE
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