The Luz Negra exhibition, at the temporary exhibition galleries until 16th June, came about through a partnership between the National Museum of Theatre and Dance and the Institute of Italian Culture.
The exhibition presented, for the first time in Portugal, some of the most outstanding photographers on the Italian scene and aimed to be the first of a series covering the photography of the most important European theatre and dance centres. The choice of Italian photography for the first in this series of exhibitions was fully justified because, since the 1950s, the Italian theatre scene has been profoundly renewed. This process owes much to the productions and creativity of Luchino Visconti, Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi; the excellence of lyrical and musical theatre; and the visits of the most outstanding international avant-garde companies, especially in the 1960s and 70s, with their innovations and laboratory research. The lengthy appearances of, for example, Tadeusz Kantor, Living Theatre and Jerzy Grotowski on Italian stages greatly contributed to the development of a solid, open and extraordinarily stimulating theatrical culture.
This exceptional artistic and cultural ferment attracted a multiplicity of photographers to the stage, with very different styles and sensibilities. They knew how to find a source of inspiration in the darkness of the theatre for the creation of their own expressive languages: between the documentary and the subjective, with highly diversified and innovative visual approaches profoundly marking international stage photography.
LUZ NEGRA brought together around 60 medium and large format photographs, complemented by the projection of many other digital images, as well as a selection of photobooks from the National Museum of Theatre and Dance collection and included works by a group of influential photographers, such as Pasquale de Antonis, main photographer for Visconti’s theatre; Ugo Mulas and Luigi Ciminaghi, Strehler’s collaborators at Piccolo Teatro in Milan; Tony D’Urso, visual memory of the Odin Teatret company; Maurizio Buscarino, witness to Kantor’s theatrical journey in Italy; Vasco Ascolini, master of light and image with corporal theatre; Lelli and Masotti, official photographic duo at Teatro alla Scala; Massimo Agus, international dance photographer; Marco Caselli Nirmal, and some younger photographers, visual interpreters and witnesses of a new generation of Italian experimental theatre; for example, such as Tiziano Ghidorsi, Anna Campanini, Gianluca Camporesi, Laura Arlotti and Guido Mencari.
The exhibition was curated by Cosimo Chiarelli, Photography historian and Director of the Centro per la Photography dello S. pettacolo from San Miniato (Pisa); and by Paulo Ribeiro Baptista with photography from the National Museum of Theatre and Dance.
