As part of Ronde #4, a contemporary art event of the Réunion des Musées Métropolitains Rouen Normandie, the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie presents the work of Stefano Bianchi at the Fabrique des Savoirs in Elbeuf.

Stefano Bianchi has been conducting photographic research for years, with light and matter as his main themes. Convinced that everything can be a source of wonder and a starting point for aesthetic and philosophical reflection, the photographer finds his subjects at random encounters, willingly favoring very simple and, in many ways, insignificant things.

Using a photographic technique that combines a large format 20 x 25 cm camera and artificial light, Stefano Bianchi reveals the coexistence of two objects, two distinct but perfectly superimposed entities: the known and always recognizable object and the other, “the object behind the object”. A transcended object, a sort of magical double of the photographed subject, evoking different images and landscapes for each.

Here, the subject, although easily named (Stracci, that is to say “mops” in Italian), escapes any attempt at taming it: it is there before our eyes but it constantly takes us elsewhere. It is no longer the ultimate and forever frozen goal of the photographic image but, at the same time, the vehicle of the journey, the ferryman and the passage.

There is,” writes the photographer, “an intimate and secret place where things radiate an unsuspected richness, where, in the silence and the chiaroscuro, they reveal themselves to our eyes.

The search for this place, a real breaking point between reproduction and revelation, is the main thread of Stefano Bianchi’s photography.

Presented in the machine room, the photographs will resonate with a particular echo in the context of the Fabrique des Savoirs as they recall the past of the place, once a textile factory. Between the imposing silhouettes of the looms, carding machines and other machinery, will appear the graceful silhouettes of the suspended photographic prints.

The Knowledge Factory
7 cours Gambetta
76500 Elbeuf
Bus 32 (stops Th. des arts, République-Quais, Place Saint-Sever, etc)
TAE lines D (IUT or Poussin stops) and A (Calvaire stop)