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June 9, 2010
Massimo Vitali's images of bleached-out bathers in the sea at Italian resortsare taken with a wooden Deardorff from the 1950’s and then enlarged digitally are a welcome contrast to the convention of photographs of empty petrol station in the US desert:
Massimo Vital, Plumb Beach, from Landscape with Figures
This bird's eye view of people taking time off to relax on long, hot summer days are taken with an 8 x 10 camera on a podium:
Vitali has been doing this for a few years now, and has perfected his technique. He sets up his custom-made perch 20 to 30 feet in the air, frames the landscape background he plans to capture with his 8 x 10 or 11 x 14 camera, and then waits for the landscape to fill up with people and their individual dramas. While he waits, he becomes invisible and very attentive. When the moment is right — when the field is filled with complexity and a multitude of interactions — he releases the shutter.
He has an ability to show masses of people in landscape surroundings with a balance of formal and narrative details
Massimo Vital, Cefai
Vitali approaches mass leisure and tourism the way the Bechers approached water towers and pitheads and his work is allows the photographic gaze to be invisible.
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The Cefai shot looks like a recreation re-creation of the ghats in Varanasi.