Tempus-captum

Project of Analysis and Photographic Exploration in the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum.

“The ruins are not the past, they are the future that invites us to pay attention and enjoy the present” – Josef Koudelka.

From this reflection by the great Master of Photography, Josef Koudelka, begins the year-long work developed in this project, where the guiding principles for the authors have been the concepts of time, the visual relationship with our past, and the ability to narrate it to contemporary audiences using modern communicative languages.

“Tempus Captum” is the at the same time choral and diverse narrative that forms a kaleidoscope of perspectives on one of the most “overexposed” and known sites in visual history, not only in Rome but in all ancient art.

This project was born within the collaboration between the Academy of Arts and New Technologies and the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum, involving the students of the Photography course, conducted by Professor Claudia Primangeli in the Triennial Video Making program and coordinated by Professor Valerio di Paola.

The exhibition showcases the works created by each student based on extensive study of the site under the guidance of the park’s archaeologists, particularly Dr. Andrea Schiappelli, the head of the Educational and Training Services.

The collection of images gathered for reflection spans from classical to contemporary ages, encompassing painting, engraving, photography, and cinema. It is a substantial collection, but by no means burdensome. It is precisely with this paradigm of narrating the ancient and its actualization in the present that the authors of the presented projects have measured themselves.

This constant flow of time, like a “fil rouge” in motion, has allowed them to create and shape their own vision by drawing from the ancient and reinterpreting it with contemporary creative tools. This is the deeper meaning of the concept of “Tempus Captum,” a project in which time has the lead role as both photographic and historical time, a time captured and fixed through the camera lens to be expressed in a contemporary context.

Photography thus becomes the ideal tool in the hands of young authors to appropriate a place, to get to know it, to capture its continuous flow, and through their own perspective, to offer the observer an instant that, in a modern language, preserves within it the centuries-long flow of history.