Elio Ciol (born in 1929) has been shooting same places in black and white for over half a year: Assisi in the province of Perugia and its surroundings. Assisi under snow drifts, in a fog, in winter and in summer. In Elio Ciol's photographs, arcades, stairs, curves of empty streets, ancient walls drenched in the sun and casting fanciful shadows, stand next to panoramic views. Like pieces of mosaic, these images come together to form a harmonious view of the world loved by the photographer.

According to writer Carlo Sgorlon, “Ciol, as many others, is attached to his Penates and his culture, his feeling toward them being similar to religious. Therefore, this place for him is not only the starting point, but also the point of return. Its theme is most closely connected with the artists' religious and philosophical views that fund each of his works”.

Using infrared filters that allow him to achieve unusual effects, Ciol often lends dramatic sound to the “silence” of his uninhabited landscapes.

The works of Frank Dituri (born in 1946) reveal the aspiration of creating images existing beyond time. Italian by descent, Frank Dituri was brought up and became photographer in New-York. His works were displayed in scores of galleries and museums all over the world and published repeatedly in important photographic editions. Having been fascinated by one of Giorgio de Chirico's most enigmatic works, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, he seeks to create a similar feeling of space and time in his monochromatic images inhabited by blurred silhouettes of trees, buildings and people. Dituri claims that “combination of visible reality and its psychological underpinning is absolutely essential for any work of art”. Teetering on the edge of the real and the surreal, the obvious and the concealed, the author encourages viewers to guess, conjecture and imagine.

Frank Dituri's fragmentary compositions reveal the author's interest to the heritage of the Pictorialists, a certain recovery of their artistic methods. The author's impressionistic images are penetrated with his deeply personal attitude to his objects, his main character being the “feeling” – changeable and elusive, existing only here and now. On the contrary, Elio Ciol's photographs are academically austere. The nature is shown here magnificent and unapproachable. There is no place for humans in it, and the ancient buildings are the only inhabitants of this world where the time and tradition can be sensed almost on the physical level.

The exhibition Density of Silence opening in ROSPHOTO shows two subjective views, two examples of interpretation of the world, realized in the images of Italian nature, freed of anything accidental and inconsistent.

Maria Gavrilchik

Exhibition curator – Andrey Martynov