Dark Memories – Sotheby’s

“Whatever silently speaks is the body” Pier Paolo Pasolini

Barbieri’s approach to nude photography has been long. Long and deeply thought. In his trilogy of books on the Tropics he had experimented the theme. But these experiments did not satisfy him: the fear of vulgarity, the desire to describe a world according to his own conception that must “ennoble” even the most violent scene, the study of a suitable technique were problems that for years had occupied his mind. The human body, and sex, is an exuberant manifestation of nature. So the photographer has the pleasure of describing it in all his expressions, which are absolutely natural, without perversion, because nature itself, without any shame, is expressed through body and sex.

Barbieri’s nudes are natural, straightforward, real, and joyful, and of incredible purity and simplicity. In his photos there is the prehistoric approach to the human body, the aesthetic will of classical Hellenic beauty, the Renaissance rediscover of freedom. All this was recounted with a superb “studio” technique.

So the nude Dark Memories series is a hymn to this exuberance of nature in all its forms. Without fake modesty, without fear of banality, playing with the happiness and innocence of a child above that thin red line that has never divided, with a sharp cut, the so-called pure art from the polluted, the poetry of vulgarity, the sacred from the profane.