"In the Instant: Everything"

If you're going to be in NYC on May 13, you might want to check out this exhibit of photography by Letizia Morinia, a 23 year old woman who, in the words of the promotional material, "happens to have Down Syndrome."  It's sponsored by Communion & Liberation's Crossroads Cultural Center.

Here's a sample:

Here's the description of her work, an essay that is as beautiful as the photograph above:

What is striking about Letizia Morini’s art is the absolute value of the instant: the instant that would be inevitably fleeting if not for her camera caring enough to grab it, to “infinitize” it (in Montale’s words).

In the instant, her care, her attention move to what is small, seemingly insignificant; that which we, too busy hastily living out our “rabid days devoid of acts of love” (to quote the Italian singer/songwriter De Farbizio De Andrè), would have never deemed worthy not even of a glance. Letizia instead forces us to stop, to ‘alter time’; she uses her camera to enhance reality, to ‘reveal’ it.

Hers is a wise photography, shutter clicks never improvised but instead the fruit of a dogged passion for the thing in and of itself, a passion which becomes contagious, which by osmosis transmits itself to the eyes of the observer, wounding the heart.

Everything becomes big, absolute: A tin case of sardines is transformed into a lunar landscape; an insignificant concrete block becomes a sort of Aztec pyramid; a disarming piece of paper is a metaphor for our fragility, ruffled by uneasiness. Everything— all the possible feelings which comprise the human palette—the heart wrenching sweetness which seeps out of her portraits of children, the ferocity of a muzzle or of butchered animal carcasses, the dreamy gaze at the sky or the flowers.

Everything, Letizia tells us, is keeping a secret; everything can reveal something. Photography represents that very possibility. “You realize that in silences / things yield and almost betray / their ultimate secrets. / At times, one half expects / to discover an error in Nature, / the still point of reality, / the missing link that will not hold, / the thread we cannot untangle / in order to get at the truth.” (Eugenio Montale, The Lemon Trees).

Letizia’s pictures, however, impose a condition to those who truly want to know them: abandon. She wants to take us by the hand and help us discover that everything can be for us, forever.