Letizia Ardillo "Più avanti ancora"

Gerda Taro- Art, War and Revolution
Letizia Ardillo
Artist's Book
Title: "Still further ahead"
Mixed technique on pages of ancient book, collage and charcoal, gold leaf and silver.
Open book dimensions 30 b x 22 h

Gerda Taro's short life strikes us with her passion for all that is extreme, her revolutionary essence extends beyond her existence. It is not surprising that she was an excellent photographer, with her Leica she highlighted the protagonists of the war, fighters and civilians. Her photographic eye pushed her to go further, ever closer to details to details. This aspect inspired the title of the work: "Further on", a phrase that can be read by grasping its sense of rebellion or as a suggestion to sharpen the view more and more to grasp the entity of things. The artist's book "Ancora più avanti" was created using a book from Gerda's time. Its pages have been hollowed out, cut out so as to create circular profiles that recall the open and closed shape of the lens of a camera.
It is the metaphor of life and death seen through the logic of fullness and emptiness, of gold and silver. In the first image the explosion of life is visible, where small golden fragments give us the idea of ​​the vital sparkles of the young photographer, but wanting to extend the discourse are the sparks of all the revolutionary women who have gone beyond common sense or simply those women who bravely fought any cause. It is only through an act of strength and rupture that a higher level is reached, this is the meaning of the golden sparks of the book that emerge from its torn pages. The closed lens, represents the passing, a vortex of shapes is fanned out around a black hole, like the precise sign of a bullet made by a firearm, this image reminds us of the gun that Gerda has immortalized in one of his most famous photographs: Training of a woman of the 1936 Spanish Republican militia.