FRANCESCA SERAVALLE CURATOR



UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE ON THE EVIDENCE OF THE FIRST PHOTOS
Shoots of the URBAN INTERVENTION
In Bari, Commissioned by Planar 2015.



I envisioned the exhibition of “Until Proven Otherwise” as an adjustment to the Puntasecca’s natural environment by means of a proper Urban Intervention and by creating itineraries of an open-air museum. This does not entail the mere enlargement of a photo glued at the side of the street but I tried to integrate the image to the space create, a trompe-l'oeil of continuity between photography and nature, images and marine landscapes. I believe that integrating an image into space, specially when is an archival image, is in exchanging dialogue with the habitat. With this operation the project has obtained a different value because of bringing images of public domain to the general public been materialized.

The First Photoshopped photo "Jennifer in the Paradise.tif" by John Knoll 1987.
From my correspondence with the inventor of Photoshop 1.0, John Knoll, I knew that he used to test his invention the image of her wife Jennifer when they where at Bora Bora Island, few minutes before asking her hand in marriage.

The First Photo of ananatomic study of a kiss. By Eadweard Muybridge 1872-85.
Until Proven Otherwise.
During Gazebook Festival, that installation with the Muybridge photo, that passed the Victorian censure, had been reported to the police for obscenity. The compromising photo has been torn up twice last year during another exhibition in the street of Bari (Puglia) and a fragment of that poster has than be displayed in Wroclaw at “Photography never dies” exhibition November 17th 2016, Wroclaw, capital of European Culture. During Victorian age the censure were not allowing in the same still a nude man and woman, while two women or two men where accepted as non pornographic. The word pornography has been included for the first time in a dictionary English dictionary in 1857

The First Underwater Colour Photo.By Longley and Martin, 1926.
Until Proven Otherwise.
William Harding Longley and Charles Martin took it using a magnesiumpowered flash in 1926 in the Gulf of Mexico. “Normally, on the web, the first underwater photo is considered the one took by Louis Boutan in 1893, Instead the very first has been taken in 1856 by William Thompson, using a camera mounted on a pole.

The First Photo of the Sun. By Leon Foucault and Louis Fizeau, 1845.
Until Proven Otherwise.
Encouraged by Francois Aragot, Fizeau initially made an improvement on the daguerreotype process. Fizeau substituted bromine for the iodine used by Daguerre, which produced shaper images. His friendship with the physicist and astronomer Léon Foucault, famous even for his pendulum, also a fellow enthusiast of daguerreotyping allowed them to collaborate together to produce the first authentic photograph of the sun on April 2, 1845.