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Cattaneo Adorno’s new monograph appears as the centerpiece of her exhibition, which also features thirteen prints and a six-minute video installation. Drawing inspiration from artist scrapbooks and leporellos (accordion books), 10 Years adopts the accordion format to imagine the photographs as notes one would make in a diary to record feelings and impressions. The images in the book are printed with the same gold metallic ink and black paper as the prints on view, transforming the picture into a glimmering sliver of reverie that recalls the delicate splendors of Gustav Klimt’s symbolist paintings and the golden paint of Brazilian dancers at Carnival.
Resisting the notions of beginning and end, Cattaneo Adorno envisions 10 Years as a scroll where stories unfold in fragmented and layered narratives, much like travel itself. The photographs meld one another, unveiling the complex interplay between dislocation and interconnection equal parts enigmatic and profound. These glittering scenes of Mauritius, Egypt, Brazil, Thailand, Singapore, New York, London, Italy, Portugal, and Japan become surreal meditations of otherness as mysterious as existence itself.
Artwork and text by Sandra Cattaneo AdornoHardcover accordion-fold with booklet
10 x 13.25 inches
176 pages / 93 images (total)ISBN: 9798890180780
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Sandra Cattaneo Adorno (b. 1953, Rio de Janeiro) took up photography in 2013 at the age of 60 and has since gained extensive recognition for her work. Like Dora Maar, who reinvented her photography practice in her 70s, Cattaneo Adorno is drawn to experimentation and to innovative ways of printing and presenting her work. The author of The Other Half of the Sky, Águas de Ouro, and Scarti di Tempo (Radius Books 2020 and 2022). Cattaneo Adorno is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2003 American Photography Award, 2021 Lens Culture Street Photography Juror’s Pick, and the 2019 Portrait of Humanity Award in collaboration with Magnum Photos.
In 2022, Cattaneo Adorno launched her solo exhibition during the 59th Venice Biennale, organized by the European Cultural Centre. She has also exhibited in Women Street Photographers exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur and New York; Galleria del Cembalo, Rome; Lens Culture, New York; Photoville, Brooklyn; Sony Awards Exhibition, London. Her work has been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Geographic, and The Guardian, as well as Women Street Photographers (Prestel 2021) and Portrait of Humanity (Hoxton Mini Press, 2019).
While on press for her second book, Águas de Ouro, Sandra Cattaneo Adorno noticed the brightly colored metal plates used to make test proofs. The plates, called “scarti” (Italian for “scraps”), showed her photographs as monochromes in shocking pink, bright yellow, royal blue, and black, evoking the spirit of Andy Warhol. A jolt of recognition coursed through her veins as Cattaneo Adorno realized the curious way in which photography can be used to preserve — and rearrange — fragments of time.
When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill in March 2020, Cattaneo Adorno noticed time began moving in strange ways, stretching endlessly into some unknown beyond but, if not preserved, disappearing from memory as though it never occurred. She began to feel as though she were accumulating “scraps” of time layering upon itself. Determined to give this experience form, Cattaneo Adorno began traveling through the inner space of her imagination. Delving through her archive, she began collaging otherwise unrelated images to create a series of new work that blurs the boundaries of reality and illusion as a metaphor for the mind.
In her third book, Scarti di Tempo, which means both “time discrepancy” and “scraps of time,” Cattaneo Adorno offers a meditation on perception: how we experience time, memory, connection, and the boundaries between reality and illusion. Moving away from representation, the photographs dissolve into abstraction, transporting us into another realm, the one they share with music and poetry. The book also contains a QR code that links to an original score composed by the artist’s husband, which provides an opportunity to experience the overlapping harmony of image and sound. Scarti di Tempo includes an introduction by GueorguiPinkhassov (b. 1969 in Moscow), award-winning Magnum photographer who has covered international events for four decades.