Andrea Angelucci

"My images are never totally false but they aren't entirely true either - a bit like my own life." This sentence alone defines the "world" of Andrea Angelucci, that world that he himself has perceived along the divide between truth and artifice, between amazement and indifference, between suggestion and calculation. Synonyms and antonyms in the dictionary of life. But our intention here is not to trace Andrea's existential biography - he's still too young for that - even though this would underscore aspects correlated with his images. However, some traits are worth describing, precisely because they are integrated with his way of viewing and presenting life. For example, his city, Assisi, is not relegated to the background and, indeed, the "Image Gallery" is a close accomplice in his production, at least for the time being. He was a boisterous student in Assisi, that muffled and secluded town where he was born one cold day in 1968. This was an emblematic year that, unbeknownst to him, planted the seeds of a protest that came across through a few letters send "postage due" and delivered to his parents with the usual requests to reimburse furnishings that had become unusable after Andrea had "been through them". And later, at the university - loved, hated and never finished - another sign of this was an excessive chemical reaction that filled the university classroom with unbearable fumes. These were seemingly exuberant and futile experiences, and yet they had the power to mark his future path. The "seeds" of photography nevertheless had roots as far off as adolescence, a flowerpot that can never manage to hold the "germs" of youth. One of them "took", and immediately after a violent summer thunderstorm, the reflections and colors of nature, the countryside, the roofs and the stones convinced him that photography represented the only true freedom. When he was just twenty years old, his color images had already been printed in an important guidebook on Assisi. And from that point on, his "curriculum" became richer and richer and his testimonials ever more meaningful, intended for published works of unquestionable importance. But emotion, that agitation and earnest inner turmoil, was always there, just like the first day, to bear witness to the liveliness and honesty of his actions. Virtually a door opened onto the world, a threshold to be crossed and recrossed - and where the eye (the soul) represents a journey back and forth between heaven and earth, between light and darkness, between dreams and reality. Beyond that door, however, Andrea succeeds in conversing with his inner self and with the world around him. This dialogue is the source of subjects that are almost never human but that are alive nevertheless: this is his badge of honor. Stones, cans and above all, rocks, history, art, trees, meadows and clouds, skies, dawns and sunsets, in a throbbing allegory. Added to this is a sort of artifice whose composition nevertheless has a natural base, with the aggregation of elements that allude to the fantastic. And a return to dreams. Dreams that become hope or - better yet - understanding when Andrea Angelucci declares that he is ready to travel down a parallel path, the path of Cinematographic Photography. A fairy tale that, in the not-so-distant future, will find its place in his first film. "

Adriano Cioci