The intermedial relationship between photography and poetic text in contemporary Italy has been the focal point of artistic practice for some of the most influential poets of the 21st century. Notable figures include Guido Mazzoni, Carmen Gallo, Tommaso Di Dio, Milo De Angelis, Vivian Lamarque, and Corrado Benigni. At the heart of their contemplation lies a reciprocal connection between photography and poetry. What frequently emerges in their writings is the idea that photography and poetry do not seek to challenge one of the fundamental aspects of literary texts: the power of deception or, in simpler terms, the absence of truth.
In contrast to this perspective, Italian poet Laura Pugno, born in Rome in 1970, has embarked on an exploration of the intermedial dialogue between poetry and photography to unveil a different truth. Pugno’s poetics diverge from the notion of photography as an objective witness to reality, a medium incapable of falsehood. Her approach stems from two central questions: how can one deceive using one’s own image? And how can the manipulation, modification, or exaggeration of one’s own image prompt contemplation of the defining mechanisms of poetry?
Pugno’s book, titled Il colore oro (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007), delves into intermedial practice, forging a connection between the language of poetry and an exploration of otherness, decentralization, and openness. In this work, poetic text relies on visually rich, polished, and compelling poetic imagery. The book itself incorporates photographs, materializing in the form of unraveled marble surfaces, detailed hieratic gestures, and prominent elements in the foreground such as hands holding bowls or dripping with colors. These two layers—the textual and the photographic—engage in a dialectical (and thus also symbolic) exchange, not overlapping or merely chasing each other, but converging to construct an emblematic work. The surfaces and volumes, the interplay of light and darkness, make it an exceptionally traversable piece.
Photography enables the poetic text to adopt a ritualistic tone through the consistent use of the apostrophe. Running through the entire collection is a transversal apostrophe, embodied by the figure of a ‘mermaid-thou’ that, unchallenged, dominates the extensive cast of lyrical referents in Il colore oro. The mermaid represents an estranged and alienated dimension of the offended ‘female’, an object of both violence and adoration, a deconsecrated idol, a chimera embodying the absence of the ‘you’ in the Western lyric tradition:
se le belle
sirene ci divoreranno,
se le belle bestie disumane
non sei tu quella che ascolta queste voci
non sei tu che giochi
con noi,
dea d’oro, ragazza-marmellata
[if the beautiful / mermaids devour us, / if the beautiful inhuman beasts / it is not you who hears these voices / it is not you who plays / with us, / you golden goddess, you marmalade-girl]
The ‘mermaid-thou’ becomes a complex extension of this absent and ever-changing feminine essence, which is perpetually captured in the ritualistic process of transforming into something other than oneself (‘la ragazza . . . diventerà sirena’). Simultaneously, the ‘mermaid-thou’ enables Pugno to initiate a metamorphosis of the lyrical subject. As Pugno expressed in her interview for the Non solo muse project:
Ho sempre definito l’io in posizione mobile, nel senso che è tendenzialmente annidato nel tu: il tu delle mie poesie è molto spesso l’io sotto mentite spoglie o può essere l’io come pronuncia del discorso, ma allo stesso tempo anche l’io come qualcuno che quell’io riceve, quindi una posizione dialogica rifratta in una dinamica di specchi.
[I have always defined the ‘I’ in a mobile position, in the sense that it tends to be nested in the ‘you’: the ‘you’ in my poems is very often the ‘I’ in disguise or can be the ‘I’ as the pronouncement of speech, but at the same time also the ‘I’ as someone who that ‘I’ receives, thus a dialogical position refracted in a dynamic of mirrors.]
What the powerful encounter between poetry and photography accomplishes is precisely the redefinition of boundaries between subject and object, image and text, self and other, masculine and feminine, human and animal, in a new intermedial dialogue redefining both the lyric genre and that of photographic self-portrait.
Picture by Elio Mazzane, published in: Laura Pugno, Il colore oro (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007, p. 94)
Picture by Elio Mazzane, published in: Laura Pugno, Il colore oro (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007, p. 108)
Picture by Elio Mazzane, published in: Laura Pugno, Il colore oro (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007, p. 115)
