John R. Pepper
“FRAGMENTS OF ITALY 1970-2010”
Tatiana Fokina - Associate Curator, Roberta Sameraro - Curator
International Italian photographer John Randolph Pepper’s “FRAGMENTS OF ITALY 1970-2010” is his 1st personal exhibition in Georgia. Pepper shoots only in analogue B&W, Ilford HP5 film, 400asa, 35 mm lens and prints on Barite paper. “FRAGMENTS OF ITALY 1970-2010” is a selection of photographs taken between 1970 and 2011 in Rome, Sicily and other areas of the Southern of Italy. Pepper, who grew up in Rome of the Dolce Vita of artist parents, began photographing at the age of 12 with a Pentax Camera and a 35 mm lens. Apprentice to Ugo Mulas he learned quickly to wander the streets of Rome day and night (‘ROME 1969 AN HOMMAGE TO ITALIAN NEO-REALISM’) and has never stopped. In 2010 Pepper returned to Rome to explore his native city and see what had changed and what had remained the same (“SANS PAPIER”). Pepper has printed four books and his work is exhibited regularly in many different parts of the world (Italy, USA, Europe as well as in the Middle East, the Gulf Region and Russia). With his “INHABITED DESERTS” series Pepper was one of the very first Italian photographers to exhibit in Teheran after the Revolution and then simultaneously show the same work in Israel a few weeks later.
“FRAGMENTS OF ITALY 1970-2010” is composed of 40 evocative photographs, that Pepper took of the people he met by chance on his travels throughout Italy. Pepper is an observer, often from afar, portraying the life of man in his most essential forms detached from cultural or temporal specifics. He is a member of that diminishing club of street photographers, forever armed with a 35mm camera, waiting for situations to present themselves spontaneously. Loyal to classic traditions, he makes frames images showing them for what they are, in a vision of the world in which realism contrasts with a quasi-mysterious tale, the physical observation with the psychic revelation. One of the more salient aspects of his photography is the way in which they reject time — something that might seem a contradiction with the very nature of photography. As pointed out by curator, art critic Roberta Semeraro: Pepper’s photographs are timeless, meaning it is difficult to give a precise temporal connotation of when the photograph was taken. Like Swan, dunking his pastry into his tea, reminds him of eating them as a child on a Sunday morning before going to Mass, so Pepper relives his lost time in his photographs.