Rocco Rorandelli

Manuela De Leonardis (exhibition curator)

Is there a connection between dreams of glory and concrete? ‘Glory’, ‘concrete dreams’, ‘confidence building’. Words that express desires projected into a potentially dystopian future – the very ones that emerge in the visual short-circuit captured by Rocco Rorandelli through his photographs in the series *My India*. A project begun in 2008 and still ongoing, it began as a ‘personal diary’ of the photographer’s travels in India; Rorandelli is a founding member of the TerraProject collective alongside Michele Borzoni, Simone Donati and Pietro Paolini. It is an account of the radical changes in the human, natural and urban landscape, particularly in three major cities of the Indian subcontinent: Delhi, the megacity of the north; Mumbai, the megacity of the south; and Chandigarh, the capital of two states – Punjab and Haryana – whose name is linked to Le Corbusier’s utopian project. Oscillating between wonder and dismay, these colour images evoke contradictory and, in part, ambiguous emotions, portraying an India far removed from any notion of exoticism, and increasingly akin – if anything – to the urban peripheries that populate the globe, both East and West. In this deconstruction of a postcard image framing buildings and people, the sense of initial disorientation felt by the observer transforms, rather, into a gaze which, whilst not indulgent, is almost accustomed to the familiarity it recognises in those ‘non-places’.  A paradox highlighted by Rorandelli as he focuses, in particular, on the various aspects of the progressive urban sprawl that advances by encircling, engulfing and ultimately erasing – partially or entirely – domesticated nature. This phenomenon of the transformation of peripheral areas affects not only the economy and the environment, but also the movement of people: the massive migration from the countryside to the cities and the consequent abandonment and ‘desertification’ of other places. India, with its military might (it has possessed the atomic bomb since 1974), a world leader in the technology industry and outsourcing, but also the most populous country on earth with over 1.4 billion inhabitants, finds itself grappling, on the one hand, with a remarkable economic boom and, on the other, with the upheaval of rural and urban areas which, in the midst of this sudden growth, are losing their identity. ‘My interest is driven partly by this – that is, by documenting this phase of expansion,’ says the photographer, ‘this moment in which cities are spreading out, in which empty spaces are being filled, and which involves the social aspect.’ ‘There are social groups, for example, that give way to others, and the presence of temporary structures, such as the tent cities of seasonal workers that spring up on the outskirts of megacities and which, at some point, will disappear, leaving those spaces free for the construction of new buildings.’ The square format of the photographs stems from an initial choice made by the artist regarding the film used for shooting with the Hasselblad. Subsequently, the work continued in digital form, maintaining this stylistic uniformity, which expresses not only an aesthetic quality of symmetrical rigour and visual order, but also the photographer’s own relationship with the subject – direct and balanced. In framing that reality, Rorandelli does not overlook the dead-end alleys, the abandoned or unfinished buildings, nor the macroscopic effects of the anthropogenic process of land consumption. ‘The trajectory is fairly straightforward, but if you look at it on a smaller scale, that is where you can also perceive the presence of errors or setbacks, of attempts that did not come to fruition.’ There’s a bit of this in all my photographs, which alternate between architecture and portraits, or images that capture the humanity living within those spaces.’ The value of the documentary style lies in the photographer’s extraordinary freedom as he immerses himself in a human drama whose characters retain their integrity: from the young, newly wealthy couple sitting on the sofa in the living room of their middle-class home to the two circus girls with their toy guns, from the ice-cream seller to the field hockey team, from the man waiting beside the advertising hoardings to the reflections on the water of the group walking by. Men and women captured in their everyday gestures, in dialogue with the setting of which they form part, in a daily coexistence marked by acceptance or criticism, yet in any case sharing a common destiny.

Manuela De Leonardis