You, looking, are not “the other,” just as the others aren’t, whether you like it or not.
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THE PAUL THOREL PRIZE: OBSERVATORY ON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN ITALY. AN INTERVIEW WITH LINA PALLOTTA.
Lina Pallotta, one of the winners of the first edition of the Paul Thorel Prize, participated in the artistic residency at Gallerie d’Italia in Naples, which concluded with the exhibition L’undicesima casa (transl. The Eleventh House) and the publication of the artist’s book Voce’ e stommache (transl. The Stomach’s Voice).
She is leaning out the window, about to shake out a sheet covering her face. The walls of the building reveal cracks and battered pipes; they make for an awkward frame for the immaculate sheet suspended in the air, a small and pure white cloud overlooking the streets of downtown Naples. She is Loredana Rossi, founder and vice president of ATN (Associazione Trans Napoli), a non-governmental organization founded in 2007 to protect the rights and dignity of trans people.
Lina Pallotta — a Campana-born photographer who has always made representing the marginalized and the excluded her hallmark — has been collaborating with Loredana since 2011, photographing the environments inhabited by the community, pursuing a narrative distanced from the stereotypical mass media storylines. On the contrary, her works show the private, hidden, and intimate dimension of the subjects she portrays, the dimension that distinguishes a person from a clickbait.
The artist’s book, Voce ‘e stommache (Nero Editions, November 2024), is the result of the residency at the Paul Thorel Foundation in Naples, in which Pallotta took part as a winner (together with the Clusterduck collective and Jim C. Nedd) of the first edition of the Paul Thorel Prize, an observatory on the Italian creative scene focused on digital images.
Between September and October 2023, Pallotta tirelessly photographed the people she met, telling authentic stories of a community that fights and resists every day, out of anyone’s sight. She photographs on the street, in homes, or in the studio of the artist Paul Thorel (1956-2020), made available by the Foundation.
L’undicesima casa (March 9 – May 5, 2024, Gallerie d’Italia, Naples) is an exhibition that showcases the works of the three winning artists. Pallotta’s installation — a large horizontal mirror that supports the photographs — allows the viewer to see and recognize themselves as they walk, realizing they are an integral part of a world that has always been described as distant and different, complex and challenging, sometimes ridiculous and degrading.
We discussed counter-narratives, alternative stories, and new representations with the artist.
Marianna Reggiani: This was the first time you used color for your project. How did it go?
Lina Pallotta: In the 90s, I used color a lot for editorials and photojournalist assignments, so for me, it was always connected to the work, to what I was asked to photograph. I never used it for my personal projects.
However, since the Foundation deals with spreading digital photography — of which Paul Thorel was one of the pioneers — I had to deal with color.
Also, during the residency, I had Paul Thorel’s studio at my disposal, and this is also not exactly my field: I have always worked with black and white film using natural light and in dimly lit situations. Such a setting gives life to grainy and sometimes out-of-focus surfaces, while digital generates homogeneous images with a smooth surface, sharp and accentuated. This surprised me more than the color; I was pretty fearful.
At first, it was difficult to recognize myself in the shots. I felt a strong sense of disorientation, I was seeing things I couldn’t internalize. Then, I decided to use the transfer from color to black and white, and so I started to reappear, I began seeing myself in the photographs. I slowly freed myself from some obstacles that my personal history always puts in my path. I left all the portraits taken in the studio in color, along with all the photographs of public events. So the color took on its own specificity.
M.R.: Browsing through the photographs, you can perceive the strong chorality of the project and the intent to involve as many subjects as possible. How much of the dialogue that I imagine you had with these people influenced your photography? How much human exchange is there?
L.P.: There is a lot of it. I started with Loredana Rossi, whom I met through Porpora (Marcasciano, ed.) and whom I had already photographed in the past. Thanks to her and Mario Di Martino, I met the other people I portrayed during the residency. All of them were already familiar with my work. This sort of proximity allowed me to “skip” a series of steps, making everything easier.
I asked to be able to photograph in unconstructed situations, as I had done for the Porpora project (Nero Editions 2023, ed.), and they granted it to me. After an evening spent together, finding the moments I was looking for was easy.
The difficulties arose when Loredana went out on the Domiziana to do the street unit and talk to the sex workers. In those cases, I couldn’t photograph; only one person allowed me to do so.
M.R.: The Porpora project lasted thirty years, while this was concentrated entirely in a month. How does the time you have at your disposal influence your work?
L.P.: The project required full immersion: every morning, as soon as I woke up, I went to Loredana or the others. It was a rhythm that, on one hand, stressed me a lot and, on the other, made me concentrate; it was like a double-edged sword. I had this constant thought of having to do it right away, of having to hurry up.
After the end of the residency, I returned to Naples to shoot twice, in two specific situations: on the occasion of the Transgender Day of Remembrance (photo 4) and again on the occasion of a Christmas event, the Tombola Scostumata, on December 20th (photo 5).
M.R.: What role did Naples play in it?
L.P.: Surely, knowing Loredana, who is Neapolitan, had its importance, as did the attitude of Neapolitan people, who are generally more welcoming. They make you feel more “comfortable,” even when taking pictures. Furthermore, the chaos of the city put me in a condition of greater flow.
M.R.: The title of the book is a Neapolitan phrase that defines expressive modalities, such as “the voice of the stomach,” something deeply visceral and rooted within us. Where does it come from?
L.P.: Loredana gave me the title. One day, she said to me: “Your photos are like ‘a voce’ e stommache” (trans. “the voice of the stomach”). I asked her, “But what does that mean?”… You know when you feel something in your stomach? I looked at her and said, “Loredana, you found me the title.”
M.R.: In what part of your photography does this viscerality reside?
L.P.: I shoot in response to a momentary stimulus. Maybe I can choose the situation, but the moment of the shot is always an immediate and instinctive response; there is no preparation, and they are always very fleeting.
M.R.: In the installation created at the end of the residency, can the mirror be interpreted as an invitation to the public to take part in the debate?
L.P.: Yes, but not only that… If you look at the works, you look at yourself because there are gaps between one photo and another. So the community is around you anyway; you are in it, even if you don’t know this community. You can put all the distances you want, but we are all part of it.
At a certain point, I had to conceptualize the choice of photos to include; I didn’t want to build anything linear because I felt that there was still a lot that I hadn’t explored due to lack of time, and it seemed to me that I had touched on many things in a fragmentary way. I didn’t have the conscience to make a radical selection, which attracted me in a certain sense. So, at a certain point, I asked myself how to keep everything together. The mirror became the possible aggregation for the fragments. Even today, people put photos on the mirror in their bedrooms without any connection between them. It is the mirror itself that creates the bond.
You, looking, are not “the other,” just as the others aren’t. Whether you like it or not.
M.R.: Your way of representing the community very explicitly proposes the commitment to escape from stereotyped and mass-media representations. Over the years, during your artistic career, have the ways in which you pursue this objective changed?
L.P.: The younger people I photographed independently decided how to be photographed; they chose it to express themselves. This made me understand that a lot has changed: years ago, that way of representing oneself was linked to nightclubs and the street. Now, people — even very young — experience it as an expression of identity but also of freedom: “I am like this; I dress glamorously not because I go to walk the streets but because it is my desire.” I felt I had to give voice to this aspect too.
M.R.: So your change was dictated by the change in the people you photographed?
L.P.: Times and people, yes.
M.R.: Where is this project situated in a spectrum between documentary photography and portraits of people you love?
L.P.: The documentary approach remains more or less constant in the sense that I like to immerse myself in what happens around me. However, the project doesn’t have the rigor that an actual documentary work should have, which would also imply a more linear relevance. In this work, shots represent specificities and real situations that happened, but overall, they allow a much looser reading than documentation. This presupposes a more objective eye, while there is invariably little objectivity. If I had to define it, it is fragmented and decidedly personal documentation.
M.R.: Was it challenging to transfer the sequence of images from the installation to the paper pages?
L.P.: The most considerable difficulty was trying to give the page the fragmentation that was on the mirror. I may have had second thoughts about this aspect.
If you look at the sequence of photos, there is always a sort of conflict; the narrative line is completely shattered. Assembling the mirror was a bit like doing a puzzle, I changed it many times. At a certain point, I printed a mockup of the mirror on cardboard (3 x 2 m) and brought it to Rome, and this allowed me to work on it even remotely. From there I made several changes, right up to the last one.
M.R.: Is there anything you would like to add that I didn’t ask you?
L.P.: I would just like to emphasize the collaboration of the community because if they had been less available, it would have been more complicated. People have a life, so a month seems like a lot, but it is very little. I felt them close and full of support.
Interview by Marianna Reggiani
Translated by Dobrosława Nowak
