Gabriele Stabile, Swim till I sank, 2022

“What happens to journalistic reportage photographs when the news is published, outdated and years of new news put distance between the shot and the life of the image?” This seems to be the question Gabriele Stabile asks himself when, after more than a decade, he reopens his archive and begins his creative journey with the photographs deposited there, transforming them into the plates you see as you leaf through the book. The photographer’s creative action, like human memory, leaves traces, marks, scratches, repetitions of images, makes the memory an emotion, immediate though not very vivid and definitely reworked. Swim Till I sank is an invitation to plunge into the depths of memories, without necessarily drowning. “These photographs are reborn by passing through the filter of a kind of dream, a dimension much larger and broader than precise recollection and mere fact. The golden eyes here are also those of memory, passing beyond the moment to embrace time. They see the beauty and elegance of the gesture that resembles itself in places, times, actions far apart. The Aristotelian units of photojournalism are definitely gone. The artist’s gesture thus passes through two moments: the immediate recording of the fact and the reworking of the material when, years have passed, it has lost its “topicality” and sometimes even the exact memory of where the photo was taken. The practice of imagination is the necessary exercise to restore life and truth to the world.” – Giulia Zorzi