| Curiously drawn by the immediate, Michele Bressan has compiled and reared a personal aesthetic in these passing Romanian scenes. In his four years of activity as a photographer he attained a firm and thorough documentation of a barefaced, yet unobserved local life. His pictures may appear frank in their depicting of everyday viewing, but it’s rather a matter of sincerity: to himself, the subject, and the viewer. The absence of a custom, personal photographing method, studio work, or technical exuberance creates a tacit agreement between him as photographer and the affected. This later on enables a sort of magic to loom: the act of taking a picture is understood in its literal meaning, of opportunistically extracting an image from a larger context…. |  |
Andra Baltoiu
Curiously drawn by the immediate, Michele Bressan has compiled and reared a personal aesthetic in these passing Romanian scenes. In his four years of activity as a photographer he attained a firm and thorough documentation of a barefaced, yet unobserved local life.
His pictures may appear frank in their depicting of everyday viewing, but it’s rather a matter of sincerity: to himself, the subject, and the viewer. The absence of a custom, personal photographing method, studio work, or technical exuberance creates a tacit agreement between him as photographer and the affected. This later on enables a sort of magic to loom: the act of taking a picture is understood in its literal meaning, of opportunistically extracting an image from a larger context and transforming it into a framework to another contingency.
As Robert Adams puts it, “when a photographer is put in the position of excessively expressing his work, he is admitting his failure.” The picture thus works as a visual synopsis, whose elaboration is left to the viewer. Whether its final script coincides with the initial intention is borne in that mutual honesty. It is the old game of ambiguity and sincerity, as many of Bressan’s images appear peculiar, showing vague, uncertain identities.
There is yet another kind of parallel in Bressan’s images, fairly connected to irony and criticism, also fixed in this silent settlement. While irony is outspoken and plain, raging from humor to mockery, the line between contempt and self-sarcasm is hazy and oblique. The viewer finds himself in the position of extracting the obvious, yet faced to admit the inconspicuous possibility of being himself, part of a straightforward, sarcastic plot.
