There is a tangible, concrete, phenomenal reality whose existence photography can testify to through the immediacy of its representational evidence—but this is not what interests Roberto Antelo. What lies at the center of his artistic research is the narrative that branches out from this reality. As Luigi Ghirri once stated: “Photography is essentially a device for selecting your field of attention… it is simply about activating a mental process, activating the gaze and beginning to discover things in reality that were previously unseen, even assigning a different meaning to objects and elements of reality. Activating a different field of attention.”
Antelo’s shots are capable of depicting a sense of temporal and ontological perspective, rather than a spatial one, in order to deeply explore what lies hidden in places, gestures, and people’s souls. Through analog photography, he reflects on the possible ambiguity of the image's appearance, seeking a vision that continues from an intuition. His poetic synthesis, amplified by black and white, retains the tension of suspended atmospheres—metaphysical in some respects—and becomes a catalyst capable of activating a sequence of references that suggest a latent world beyond the surface.
His preference for long exposure stretches the instant, allowing a glimpse into the complexity of reality and opening the view onto the dimension of time: a rupture in space-time is created, and the blurred images—dust-like apparitions—convey a sense of movement within a reality in transition. They generate a vibration akin to an infinite inner echo.
The artist seems to blur the palpable materiality of what he captures to reveal the ambivalence between presence and absence, the ephemeral and the eternal, body and space, identity and metamorphosis.
While on one hand photography serves as a document of the immanence of things, on the other hand, Roberto Antelo’s work seems to aim at showing us what exists and endures beyond our knowledge and awareness, offering an escape route toward transcendence.
