Ilir Butka, Curator 

The PHOTOGRAPHY “polluted” by ART
or ART “polluted” by PHOTOGRAPHY?

would like to define the concept suggested by MARUBI 2003 as such.
I figuratively use the term “polluted” just to illustrate what the history of the evolution of photography offered, obeying to the tendency that every art  has gone through.
If the photography only was the combination of two sciences, optics and chemistry, in which the first one offers the instruments for the creation of the image through the lenses and the second one allows the registration of this image in a sensitive material to the light, then it would be very difficult to find even small signs of artistic expression.
In its genesis, the photography aspired a loyal and unified reflection of the reality. This process went through technical perfection, passing then in the application of alternative forms and personalization. Rigid professional works became easily identified with taboos, which held hostage the creative spirit and the expressive individuality of the artists for a long time. In this new situation the artistic refusal of those rules was obvious.
For example the metamorphosis of the concept “on focus”, as a crucial element of the photography, incurred an extraordinary evolution, creating new alternative space for artistic interpretation.
In paradox, a photography that once upon a time was “ineligible” because the big masters defined it “out of focus”, nowadays it could be hanged in the best art galleries. This is a confirmation of the fact that the way of perceiving emotions not necessarily has to go through the correct execution of technical parameters.
On the other hand pretty often the photography enters in the realization of the visual art applications as a valuable element in service of the creation of a bigger emotional impact.
The optic of a traditional photography somehow polluted by art and the art polluted by photographic elements is exactly the concept of this exposition.
“NITRATO d` AR-GENTO or NITRATO d’AR-TE”
The film is just a banal support of celluloid, sprinkled by tiny pieces of silver nitrate that the artist, with obsession of an alchemist, tries desperately to personalize with the “element” of his art.
With regard to the form of the exhibition, the principle would be the creation of a dark atmosphere in which the spectator would feel himself as inside a Camera Obscura, where the only source of light is represented by the exposed photographs.
My preference is directed towards a selection based in black and white photography and for this reason I would appeal the authors to make the selection of their works in this optics.

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