Carlo Valsecchi's 'Bellum' Traces WWI Frontline Through Photography

Carlo Valsecchi (born 1965 in Brescia) presents 'Bellum,' an exhibition of twenty large-format photographs at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, accompanied by a catalog from Silvana Editoriale. The project, initiated three years ago at the suggestion of Luigi Maramotti and Sara Piccinini, follows the World War I frontline through the Alps from Veneto to Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Valsecchi simulated a war campaign, using military roads and positioning his camera like a machine gun, favoring winter light. The images capture empty forts, woods, clearings, and a hut used by Ermanno Olmi for his film 'Torneranno i prati.' The work is structured around a conceptual triad of space, light, and time, with light as a tangible form that makes time visible. Photographs like #01152 Rotzo, Vicenza (2020) show walls as abstract lines, while #01125 Roana, Vicenza (2020) evokes a skull from inside a fort. Nature mimics artifice in #01145 Fogliano Redipuglia, Gorizia (2021), where frozen branches resemble barbed wire. The violence of nature appears in #01147 Grigno, Trento (2020), showing pine trunks felled by the 2018 Vaia storm, metaphors for mutilated bodies. The exhibition opens with #01137 Cogollo del Cengio, Vicenza (2021), a black earth scarred with scratches, and closes with #01167 Sacrario Militare di Redipuglia, Fogliano di Redipuglia, Gorizia (2021), featuring the repeated inscription 'presente,' suggesting the abyss within and history's repetition.