BOTTO, Andrea (Rapallo, 1973)Ka-Boom. The Explosion of Landscape

Design di Fabrio Radaelli

KA-BOOM is an imaginative manual of explosivism in which original archival materials meet staged images of do-it-yourself constructions, along with the author's own photographs of real, non-military explosions. The result is a sophisticated survey of the state of contemporary photography, where numerous questions are raised and no simple answers are given. (...) The project is articulated through a mechanism in which any idea of authenticity becomes almost impossible, mixing fiction, reality and staging to oppose the idea that everything is spectacle, suggesting the application of critique and memory as forms of resistance. Recalling the structure of Bertold Brecht's diaries and their use of photography as a multidisciplinary medium, capable of both seducing and alienating the reader, Andrea Botto attempts to transform images into means to activate processes of knowledge. (...) The structure of the book cancels any illusion of continuity and pushes the viewer to take a position, to reflect on the images and their development. (Ilaria Bonacossa, from "Photos as text").