EXTRAORDINARY

BARBARA PECE

// Barbara is a photographer from Mantua, Italy. After living for many years in Genoa, she returned to her birth place. Her study curriculum was based on the arts, and she is a graduate in scenography from the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona. She became a full time artist in 2006. In her photography she tries to turn her gaze towards surreal places. We present some images from her project “ExtraOrdinary“.

“Photography was one of my first interests, a love passed on to me by my aunt. I chose photography to complete my inner journey, to face my past and my fragility. A journey that combines the imaginary with reality,” she says. “During the years of the Academy I followed various in-depth photography courses, including, later, courses on specific topics. I have collaborated for several years in the sector of preparations and design with a strong predilection for experimentation.”

When she became a full-time artist she began deepening different techniques and art forms, indulging her great curiosity, wishing to convert all she knew into a single, multifaceted final work. “I began to experiment with small theatres/boxes in which to combine photography with painting and decoupage, later arriving at both oil and acrylic painting. Now I use my pictorial and color knowledge to build backgrounds and compositions in my photographs.”

Barbara was a member of the Lorenzo Garaventa Foundation, which brought together various artists from the Genoa area. She has exhibited her works in solo and group exhibitions in Verona, Castelfranco Veneto, Locus Animae in Lido di Jesolo, Castello di Nervi, Arte Genova, Affordable Art Fair in Rome and Milan.

“In my photographs I transport my gaze to surreal places. My aim is to best convey the message behind each image and enhance its beauty. I learned to see the invisible hidden around me, to recognize shapes and colours,” she adds.

“It was by photographing and enlarging the surface of the things around me that I tried to discover what was behind these things, what was beyond them.”

Michelangelo Antonioni

What draws you to the arts?

“Art serves first of all to those who make it. It is a channel for emotions to flow out of the body, sharing them with others. A characteristic, typical of the human being. What you see is an illusion and does not represent reality. To deeply observe anything, you have to listen to your sensations and emotions. Art is what completes me, together with nature, it is my dyslexic language that uses images to communicate with the world.”

What do you like best about abstract photo art such as the images you have shared with us?

“The mystery, the surprise, the uniqueness.”

Barbara´s series “ExtraOrdinary” is about the world of the invisible in everyday life. “I look at the world in my own way and show it with my images. It is an invisible reality, in which I walk every day, which has made me remain a girl in seeing. You don’t necessarily have to leave to be able to travel, just don’t stop looking, don’t stop observing what’s next to us, that’s the journey, the time that keeps us with our nose stuck to the viewfinder looking for the angle, the light, the right times, highlighting what has always been there, even if for a single instant. I wanted to go into everyday life, just to be able to get to know it from the inside, hoping to discover a side that I couldn’t find. An inner search that helped me escape from those four walls, taking me to a new, more empirical dimension.”

Barbara spent many hours enraptured in experiments and searching for combinations, which made her discover slender structures arising from detergents, capable of supporting, even if only for an instant, “the enormous weight of colour”. She discovered a secret garden hidden in household objects, a chemistry that recalled magic. “I lost myself in this garden for more than six years, watching and rejoicing at every discovery, like a little girl in the woods, alone but not alone. I discovered that everyday life, even if very small, is the supporting structure that holds up our whole life with great strength, and we can fall in love with it.”

We find it quite easy to fall in love with Barbara´s images too.

Click on the photos to see a larger image with its title. Some images may be cropped for layout.