The series Passato (Past) was inspired by Vincenzo Cardarelli’s poem of the same name. Giacomelli began the project the year his mother passed away, working on it over the next four years. Deeply autobiographical, the series retraces meaningful places from Giacomelli’s life, with a young female relative as its central figure. She serves as his “alter-ego,” inhabiting these spaces alongside him.

Charged with emotional tension, the series seeks to unify disparate elements, bridging temporal gaps between past events and present memories. Passato intertwines imagery from Giacomelli’s earlier series, Caroline Branson, including the flowing locks of hair and bare tree branches, with portraits of the protagonist. The hair, bearing a strong familial resonance, belonged to Giacomelli’s daughter, Rita, photographed in the early 1960s. Through superimpositions, the protagonist’s face and body repeatedly merge with scenes from Giacomelli’s past, transforming the series into an echo chamber of memory.

In the 1990s, Giacomelli reflected: “Language becomes the environment in which the image breathes. I have a vision for tenses where I feel like I’m inside them, inert, almost absent. An image is the product of a faceless interior force exploding in space. I alter reality to give sense to the subject. I decompose and recompose to create meaning.”
(Mario Giacomelli, 1990s, in Mario Giacomelli. Under the Skin of Real, ed. Katiuscia Biondi, Schilt Publishing, 2015)

(Adapted from Katiuscia Biondi’s text)