A painting as beautiful as a photo, a photo as beautiful as a painting.

In Milan, for the seventeenth edition of the Photofestival, a photographic exhibition entitled "Imago mentis - Discover Amaze Fascinate" is inaugurated.

The exhibition is at DOFMA Milan, in viale Marelli in Sesto San Giovanni. We will find 12 large format photographs by Enrico Camporese.

This is how the curator Ornella Roccuzzo describes the exhibition:

"Enrico Camporese works for his emotion, on a mental project suggested by the photographs, both in black and white and in colour, chosen on the basis of the compositional possibility and above all, in the mental space between sleep and waking, they are reflections and journeys without destinations, which have in the dream the decisive starting point for translation into reality"

These images brought to mind frequent comments I heard when visiting photo exhibitions and painting exhibitions.

When faced with particularly expressive photographs or photographs processed on the computer to enrich them with effects and superimpositions, I have often heard people say "How beautiful a painting looks".

Likewise, when visiting hyper-realist exhibitions or in front of particularly expressive paintings, I hear people say “How beautiful a photo looks”.

It would seem that achieving a result using a system created to do something else is worthy.

If I use colors and brushes to arrive at a photographic result I'm good. Maybe taking a photo would be enough.

Just as working on photographs arriving at the result that could be obtained very easily with colors and brushes is a point of merit.

Be careful, however, two procedures are not permitted:

If by painting you copy from a photo you are to blame, you are worth little.

Ignoring the fact that many artists from Van Gogh to Degas to Cézanne and so on copied from photographs. And again Canaletto and Leonardo da Vinci did not lack glass and optical cameras.

Facilitating the work for a good result should be obvious.

For photographers, the vertical drop in appreciation occurs if they admit to having used the computer.

The reprimand translates into a disappointed: "aah... he used the computer".

As if using Photoshop were a kindergartner's game.

In my opinion, whatever the technique used, it is the result that we should look at. The aesthetics of the image, what it communicates, its message.

I advise artists to replace the technical specifications of their work, i.e. oil on canvas, acrylic on board etc... One of these phrases like this when they ask you "But how did you do it?" reply:

“Secret” “Fruit of the mind” “With the hands” “With the mind”.

Choose the one you like best.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini