Marina Ballo Charmet

Since the 1980s Marina Ballo Charmet has been creating photographic series and video works that – in harmony with her philosophical and psychoanalytical training and her activity as a child psychotherapist – explore the relationship with the other. The Primo Campo (First Field) cycle focuses on the perception and visual field of the newborn. The project refers to the idea of the first visual field of a small child in the arms of a familiar figure. The detail of the face, the neck, what lies between the eye and the chest is what the child sees when (s)he is very close to someone. The photographer enlarged these photographs four times to render the idea of closeness.

Since the 1980s Marina Ballo Charmet has been creating photographic series and video works that – in harmony with her philosophical and psychoanalytical training and her activity as a child psychotherapist – explore the relationship with the other, the relationship and perception of the body with the natural, urban and domestic environment. In the Bretagne series, the repetition of a simple element, a few poles along a path, the insistence on a minimal image, with slight shifts that refer to the gesture of “walking side by side” is interesting. At the same time, in composing the sequence, the author intends to give the idea not so much of our movement as of our glances, of the mobility of our gaze.

MARINA BALLO CHARMET has been creating photography and video series since the 80s, in which – in harmony with her background in philosophy and psychoanalysis and work in child psychotherapy – she explores the relationship with the other, the relation and the perception of the body with the natural, urban and domestic environments. She photographs cities and homes from a peripheral perspective and with a selective focus that amplifies the empty spaces through framing and details, transforming the ordinary and the everyday into an unexpected surprise. Among her works are the cycles: Con la coda dell’occhio (1993-1994); Rumore di fondo (1996-2000); Primo campo (2000-2002), exploring the perception and visual field of new-born babies. Conversazione (1998) is the work that marks her passage from photography to video, followed by Passi leggeri (1999) and Disattenzioni (2000-2003); and Il parco (2006- 2010) a video project about public green areas. *She was born Milan in 1952, where she lives and works.