Hippolyte Bayard | Review: SP 67

by Fabio Severo

source: Hippolyte Bayard

 Faceless road. 'SP 67', by Roberto Schena

“No one said it but I’m sure we all felt that we had entered a Smooth Land, and that we had taken part in something that made the talk of the city down there dull and that something would tie us together for a long time, maybe until the end, invisible to other people’s eyes, as it happens to the veterans who have survived a mystic war”.

Roberto Schena’s book SP 67. La strada della tramontana scura (The road of the North Wind) ends with a text telling the story of four friends crossing a dark and somehow threatening place. Voices, noises and mysterious creatures surround the four men, increasingly feeling like they do not belong there.

A 13 km provincial road connecting the outskirts of Genoa to a small village called Calcinara, a “Smooth Land” covered by moss, damp, and time. A secret land, dark, unfriendly and uncharted. But the main subject of the book is not the road itself, but rather the territory surrounding it, mostly shown with a sequence of elusive landscapes, seen through a mist which seem to have the purpose to prevent visitors from entering.

Schena’s photographs reflect this hesitancy: sometimes they even try to embrace the whole place, but only to face the impossibility of the task. Like notes scribbled down while crossing a place where you cannot stop, Schena’s images simply respond to the energy of that land, giving up the idea of dominating it. The result reminds of an imaginary chronicle, where rather than soldiers and civilians we see wild animals, abandoned cars, a man wearing a mask on his face.

This “mystical war” is presented in a book of considerable format, in which the photographs paradoxically show us a lot of what the place intends to conceal. The suspension between memory and dream in Schena’s photographs might have gained further strength choosing a smaller and more intimate format, where the reduced size of the images could have conveyed even better the feeling of the inner journey that can be experienced along the few kilometres of a small provincial road.

“Nessuno lo diceva ma sono sicuro che sentivamo tutti di essere penetrati in una Terra Morbida, e che avessimo partecipato a qualcosa che rendeva molto insipide le chiacchiere della città di sotto e quel qualcosa ci avrebbe legato insieme per molto tempo, forse fino alla fine, invisibile agli occhi degli altri, come succede ai veterani sopravvissuti di una guerra mistica”.

Il libro di Roberto Schena SP 67. La strada della Tramontana Scura termina con un testo che racconta di un gruppo di amici che attraversano un territorio inospitale, scuro, minaccioso. Voci, rumori e creature accompagnano i quattro uomini, nei quali cresce il senso di estraneità a quel luogo.

 13 km di una strada provinciale, che comincia subito fuori Genova e raggiunge un piccolo villaggio di nome Calcinara. “Terra Morbida”, la chiama il testo alla fine del libro, terra dalle forme incerte, ricoperte dal muschio, dall’umidità, dal tempo. Terra che nasconde, che si sveglia di notte, che non accoglie i visitatori e non indica la via.

Protagonista del libro non è tanto la striscia di asfalto che unisce i luoghi, ma piuttosto il territorio che la circonda, una sequenza di paesaggi ritrosi, avvolti da una nebbia che sembra suggerire di non addentrarsi, di non lasciare il sentiero perché altri non se ne troveranno.

 Le fotografie di Schena riflettono questa ritrosia, a volte cercano di abbracciare la totalità del luogo, ma soltanto per trovarsi di fronte all’impossibilità dell’impresa. Come note scritte di fretta, mentre si attraversa un luogo in cui non ci si può fermare, le immagini di Schena rispondono all’energia del posto, rinunciando a dominarlo. Come un reportage immaginario, ma che al posto di soldati e civili ci mostri animali selvatici, automobili abbandonate, oppure un uomo con una maschera sul volto.

Questa cronaca di una “guerra mistica”, come la descrive Schena, viene presentata in un libro di formato se non grande comunque ampio, dove le immagini mostrano molto di ciò che, paradossalmente, il luogo vuole nascondere: la sospensione tra ricordo e sogno di molte scene avrebbe forse trovato ulteriore forza da un formato più raccolto, dove la dimensione ridotta delle immagini avrebbe potuto meglio riflettere il viaggio interiore che può nascere lungo i pochi chilometri di una piccola strada provinciale.

Rare Autumn | Review: SP 67

by Rare Autumn

source: Rare Autumn

Beautiful, haunting images by Roberto Schena that creates a poetic journey through a dreamlike and almost spellbound or otherworldly landscape.

Much more than "just" a road trip captured, it's a journey into your soul.


Book description:

"SP67: 13 kilometers of a provincial road from Apparizione, a neighbourhood on the borderline of Genoa, to Calcinara, four houses in the inland.

Around here, 'Dark Nord Wind' is the name given to the North Wind when it carries rain and storms.

The author spent three years to cover these 13 kilometers. More or less, it is the right amount of time if someone wants to catch the mysteries of a Place.
His car parked, he descended deep into the woods, uninvited. Expecting to retrace someone else’s steps, studying the plants, amidst the fog, in the night.


Three years of following his subjects, climbing, meeting the local inhabitants. Eating fast before the storm arrives.

These are memoirs of an explorer who desires to extract the sublime where others wouldn’t think to look for it: in a stretch of road, in an encounter with a wild pig, in a frozen night.

Two short stories by Paolo Caredda form the prologue and the epilogue.

A map of the territory provides a geographical reference to those who are interested, with their imagination, in reconstructing the author’s journey.

And for those who live in Genoa, this visual essay becomes an inspiration for discovering all the hidden places portrayed in these photographs."

We-Find-Wildness | Review: SP 67

by WFW

source:We find wilderness

ROBERTO SCHENA spent three years to cover the 13 kilometers of the road called la strada della Tramontana Scura (the road of the Dark North Wind) from Apparizione, a fraction on the borderline of Genoa, to Calcinara in Italy.

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The result is a collection of pictures featuring diverse landscapes shot through rain, fog, and dusk depicting a timeless and mysterious rural world. The road appears blurred, empty and slippery, leaving the viewer with few clues and very disoriented.

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Genoans don’t call it SP67, but its commongly addressed as “Mt. Fasce’s road”. People living in districts like Marassi, San Fruttuoso, Borgoratti o Strurla, hanged in there for sure in some periods of their life, others still do. You can probably find similar roads in other cities’ suburbs, and that’s what i liked about it. Propose a sort of microcosm that people can relate to, perhaps in their memories or imagination. - ROBERTO SCHENA for Dead Porcupine

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Additionally a map of the territory allows those who do not know the area to have a geographical reference for their imagination. And good news: SP 67: la strada della Tramontana Scura is the first monograph by Italian photographer ROBERTO SCHENA and is available via his website http://robertobeat.blogspot.com/

Dead Porcupine

by Raffaele Capasso e Francesco Claudio Cipolletta

source: Dead Porcupine

Phototalk with Roberto Schena

13Apr

SP67 is definitely one of our favorite work. Off course we’re italian and very proud of our countryman, we believe Roberto has done a terrific photogrpahic work. He got deep in his surrounding,  lived the places, the moods, the atmosphere and after several years  brought back these wonderful pictures of SP67 road.

We asked him a few questions and he was so kind to answer.

1) What’s photography for you? What’s the meaning of it?

It is a way to tell stories, bring up for discussion. By “telling stories” I mean that genre some defined as diaristic or confessional, Nan Goldin, Larry Sultan with ‘Picture from home’, Stephen Shore, Richard Billinghan. I would also add those products with a mental narration, by synaptic connections, images found in memory book, like those by Dirk Braekman e J.H. Engstrom or a way to think about the past, the nature of humankind like many of the works by Christian Boltanski.

By “bring up for discussion” I mean more conceptual approaches, pictures talking about photography, about the method of vision, to answer, to render and deconstruct visual spurs. For examples authors like Hans Peter Feldman, Roni Horn’s ‘Still Water’, Tacita Dean’s ‘Floh’ which behind their pictures’ neutrality tell us about worlds. H. P. Feldman: the flying airplanes, the bare knees that unintentionally awaken similar images in our memory. Who’s never lifted up his eyes to see a flying airplane or felt a subtle emotion looking at what a skirt uncovers. The image as least common denominator. But this is just the way I feel photography, not the way it is.

2) Many of your pictures from SP67 were shot at night. Why this choice? What’s the night for you?

The night , the fog, the rain, the darkness, they keep us from having a clear vision of reality, they’re a limit to our senses but they also push us to go further, to think or simply imagine.

A photograph, unlike moving images, gives you plenty of time to steep in the subject, get in the details, build up stories from your imagination. Perhaps it’s also a way to de-contextualize the subject, place it on a dark stage, to use this magic.

3) You’re one of the few italian photographers making a so called “contemporary photography”, your pictures silently tell about a region, places and atmospheres you care, in an emotional and contemplative process. Do you follow italian photography? What do you think about it?

I don’t have much interest in italian photography, I have no reasons to like it more than the one from the rest of the world. Maybe there’s never been a school, a movement, a memorable period to be object of research or examination. That doesn’t mean there are no typical italian issues. I think one of the most interesting work, in the last years and not only for italian photography, is Valerio Spada’s “Gomorrah Girl”. There’s everything in it, the idea at the base of making a book, social contents, a rigorous research, the poetry between the lines of an image almost impersonal, the snapshots’ sharing and its cataloguing, coherence with the book as an object and off course beautiful images.

 4) What’s the deal about making a photo book nowadays? How was SP67 book born?

There are several reasons to make a photo book, it is for sure, more than a photo collection.  SP67 had a pretty long way, also because when it started I was no longer living in Genoa - my bad- and as you can see, the work was all about weather conditions.

Genoans don’t call it SP67, but its commongly addressed as “Mt. Fasce’s road”. People living in districts like Marassi, San Fruttuoso, Borgoratti o Strurla, hanged in there for sure in some periods of their life, others still do. You can probably find similar roads in other cities’ suburbs, and that’s what i liked about it. Propose a sort of microcosm that people can relate to, perhaps in their memories or imagination.

5) How’s it to face a wild pig on the road in the middle of the night by the way? :)

Many times I drove back and forth on Mt. Face’s road looking for similar encounters. Anyway, first you gotta stop, then watch your back for incoming trucks and finally you have to be fast enough to focus and shoot. If you got something, then you’re lucky.