About the series:
Knowing how to transcend the visual information we meet up with every day, using photography as a pretext to delve deeper in order to know new worlds: this was the spirit that has led Mauro Fiorese to document places and situations on the borderline between reality and fiction for almost twelve years around our Planet.
After a long period of iconographic research both in amateurs on-line archives as well as in official State archives recently opened up to the public, the photographer took countless trips to remote sites on Earth with the intent of producing the first official Archive of Unidentified Photographic Subjects.
This Project was carried out in twelve years along the lines of the great territorial documentary campaigns, like those of F.S.A. or Alinari photographers, whose far-flung activity produced an immense catalogue of images throughout the years.
View the work here
These pictures tell us about presence as well as absence: the photographic subject is always real, for it was "found" and existing in front of the photographer when he clicked the shutter, but it always and mysteriously remains difficult to identify.
The final work takes on the significance of a photographic evidence, in a almost scientific and forensic sense of the term, of a specific moment, only chronologically and geographically denied.
Every print is supplied with an X-File number that makes consultation possible, with the curiosity of observing something indefinable and with the desire to possess something that is much more than a simple fantasy.
Parallel to his photographic work, the author decided to document this long-term project with a video diary, edited in a unique, surreal mockumentary.
This is a 12' long fiction film, produced in the same spirit and supporting the photographic project, where paradoxical situation are mixed with live breaking news and street interviews to both local friends and colleagues as well as internationally recognized artists, such as Duane Michals, Michael Kenna, Keith Carter, Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor among others.
The U.Pho.S. Project has been awarded with the following grants:
International Art Prize ARTE LAGUNA 2009 - Venice, Italy
Kaunas Photo 2008 - Kaunas, Lituania
Backlight 2008 "Tickle Attack" - WOLKERSDORF, Austria
International Photography Awards 2008 Competition (finalist) - New York, U.S.A.
John Cleary Gallery is proud to present this innovative Project for the first time in the U.S. on Saturday, March 13 2010 for a unique one-night Show.
The artist will be in attendance.