“The time and the instant”

Why Il tempo e l’istante? What’s the relationship between these two aspects?

“We combine the time of human history with the single moment, that is with the instant of a shot; thus, for example, a spontaneous gesture is endowed with a very long “life”. Each photo is like a heart’s beat which performs different moments of life.”

Where do the photos on display come from?

“We have chosen a lot of photos from the rich photographic archive of the Mag, which in fact has been enriched in the last few years by several exhibitions devoted to the landscape of the Lake Garda. Next to the historic photographs, we want to enhance some donations, which include funds that haven’t been exposed until now. It’s not an author’s solo exhibition, or the detailed account of a topic, but a narration through images from the nineteenth century – when photography started to be used to investigate the world – to the present days.

What aspects will be taken into consideration?

“There are pictures of Riva and of several other villages looking onto the lake; a section devoted to navigation and human activities linked to the lake, and a final section focusing on tourism growth of the Upper Garda area and the twentieth century. Bypassing war scenes from the two world conflicts, we highlight the transformation of the landscape through the changes in the scenery, in the habits and the evolution of photography. At first photography was for the privileged few, but when it became more popular, the approach changed and the beauty typical of candid photos faded a bit.”

Will the exhibition reveal an interaction between the past and contemporaneity, or will it have just a chronological development?

“Some contemporary shots will actually amaze visitors. The Mag museum has mounted some photographic exhibitions of important contemporary artists with “Sguardi gardesani”, a five-year project that was intended to gather different observations on the lake landscape. The curator’s intention is to invite the visitors to meditate on contemporaneity, by putting in relation some photos taken in the past to other ones taken in the present; the latter also feature colours and tell about the transformations of the landscape and of habits.” 

How will the different intellectuals be represented? Just to mention some of those who often went to Lake Garda: Kafka, Rilke, Thomas Mann and Freud?

“Lake Garda is a must for many Grand Tours, thanks to its beautiful landscapes, as well as for its favourable weather conditions. There are in fact many great travellers who visited the lake in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The great intellectuals will be mentioned in a time line on the wall. This useful panel lets us know at a glance those personalities who loved Lake Garda and who went there from time to time. There are other two time lines: one concerning the most significant events of the nineteenth century; the other tells us about the twentieth century. These two graphic representations are meant not only to deal with past historical events, but they also pinpoint some important changes that took place in the society of this area, in transports and in the building of the town of Riva del Garda.”

Layla Betti is one of the curators of the exhibition together with Claudia Gelmi and Sara Vicenzi