Burden of Wings - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3868285644 ISBN 13: 9783868285642

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag, 2015

Synopsis

I used the Polaroid camera as a painter might use a sketchpad. I shot photos freely and, as the images appeared, I loved how the Polaroid photographs interpreted what I saw. The limitations of the plastic lens softened the features captured in stone; the softened stone wings became real wings.

Mauro Marinelli's iconic cemetery images captured on Polaroid film juxtapose the inherent contradictions of the immediate moment: instant and everlasting. In homage to the sixteenth-century style of Nature Morte, the stone of mortuary sculptures softens like flesh and graveside tokens and bouquets of flowers depict life becoming death.

About this title

About the Author

Mauro Marinelli is an artist, photographer, contractor, great cook, one-time novitiate, and former photojournalist, living in upstate New York. Born and raised in White Plains, New York to Italian immigrant parents, he earned a BFA in in Photography and English from Manhattanville College in 1977. In the late 1970s Mauro traveled around the US to photograph the last of the original Italian immigrants before they were gone.
Fed up with Madison Avenue and the demands of commercial photography, Marinelli moved away from New York City to upstate New York where he farmed culinary herbs and established a successful contracting business. In the 1980s and early 90s, Marinelli exhibited his photographs at the Italian American Museums of San Francisco and the Bronx. In the last decade he has returned to his photography and completed three personal photo essays one of which is The Burden of Wings.

Review

The Burden of Wings by Mauro Marinelli illuminates the sacred threshold between life and death. Marinelli's inspiring prose and photographs of stone cemetery statuary are portals to the underworld marking "the final goodbye that doesn't wink to the future."
Marinelli's intimate images are never depressing. Luminous wilted flowers and ethereal rays of light stand in contrast to the stillness of stone. Grave site offerings tell poignant stories of our human struggle to accept mortality and honor those we love... We remember to keep silence as we face the Great Mystery. -Elaine Mansfield

The photographs have the glow of small oil paintings, rendered in the inimitable Polaroid film that seems like a visual language made just for poetry. Wilted flowers drape over a marble hand, a naked granite infant nestles in the snow, stone lips meet in a kiss of full passion. And above it all, an angel hushes the clouds.
Poets don't usually work in two languages.
Words and photographs come together to make something greater than both,and I find a wisdom where I wasn't looking. There is an aching in the work, which becomes a quiet joy, no unhappiness at all. -Sean Kernan

It can be difficult to look death straight on; the touches of sentiment among the grave markers are too intense and remind us of our own mortality. But, death informs us, if we allow it. That seems to be the point of Marinelli's gorgeous photography and text. The cemetery can be a threshold, a precipice, a juncture of inquiry... The sentiment and photographs are exquisitely paired. The author's writing is as powerful as the imagery. I've lost count of how many times I've gotten lost in this book.
-Lynne Staley

About this edition

• Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 3868285644
• ISBN 13: 9783868285642
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120